And we talked the matter over until long after midnight.
XV
FOREWARNED
The lions had now begun to give me a great deal of trouble. Timour Melek, the old villain, sat on his chair, snarling and striking at me, but still going through his paces; Empress Khatoun was a perfect devil of viciousness, and refused to jump her hoops; even poor little Aïcha, my pet, fed by me soon after her foster-mother, a big Newfoundland, had weaned her, turned sullen in the pyramid scene. I roped her and trimmed her claws; it was high time.
Oh, they knew, and I knew, that matters had gone wrong with me; that I had, for a time, at least, lost the intangible something which I once possessed—that occult right to dominate.
It worried me; it angered me. Anger in authority, which is a weakness, is quickly discovered by beasts.
Speed’s absurd superstition continued to recur to me at inopportune moments; in my brain his voice was ceaselessly sounding—“A man in love, a man in love, a man in love”—until a flash of temper sent my lions scurrying and snarling into a pack, where they huddled and growled, staring at me with yellow, mutinous eyes.
Yet, strangely, the greater the risk, and the plainer to me that my lions were slipping out of my control, the more my apathy increased, until even Byram began to warn me.