So much let me say in my defence for what has followed. I am a man not easily prone to fall into the toils of women; to whom has been given subtlety to offset their weakness. But to Lah, a man’s brain and a woman’s wit; a man’s will and a woman’s will; a man’s strength and a woman’s beauty. Aye! more than woman’s. Look to it, you who would judge me, and remember likewise the end, the end also with the beginning.
But enough. I will now set down for the better ordering of this tale, what befell at the Queen’s audience, although it was not for days after that I learned the true import of that fateful evening.
Lah then spoke in this wise:—
“Who are these two strangers, whence their coming, and what their purpose?”
Then arose Agno, the High Priest, and his eyes glowed with a strange fire, and we, watching, saw his aged hand clench fast the staff of office that it held. With a fine gesture of mingled scorn and anger, he threw out the other, palm open, towards us, where, still close guarded, we stood in silence.
“Behold!” he cried, “the invaders of our City, the murderers of the sacred ape, whose hands are red with the blood of our warriors, whose sacrilegious weapons have been turned against the dread god. Yes, I have said it—violators of Hed himself!”
A sudden thrill ran through the people, and there was something in the faces turned towards us, so pitilessly cruel, that a cold chill settled on my heart, and I was well put to it to preserve the calm disdain that sat, as was fitting, upon my countenance.
Only Lah, the Queen, looked straight before her at the speaker, and her lips, I thought, curved slightly with a little smile whose meaning was not plain to me.
Agno turned towards the listening throng with a sudden change of voice and manner.
“O worshippers of the Serpent and of Edba! Shall the wrath of the gods fall upon your heads because they look down from the appointed place and see such deeds unpunished?