“I—don’t—know.”
Cleves, flushing with embarrassment, explained: “She saw him clairvoyantly. She was lying in the hammock. You remember I had a trained nurse for her after—what happened in Orchid Lodge.”
Tressa looked miserably at Recklow,—dumbly, for a moment. Then her lips unclosed.
“I saw Prince Sanang,” she repeated. “He was near the sea. There were rocks—cottages on cliffs—and very brilliant flowers in tiny, pocket-like gardens.
“Sanang was walking on the cliffs with another man. There were forests, inland.”
“Do you know who the other man was?” asked Recklow gently.
“Yes. He was one of the Eight. I recognised him. When I was a girl he came once to the Temple of Yian, all alone, and spread his shroud on the pink marble steps. And we temple girls mocked him and threw stemless roses on the shroud, telling him they were human heads with which to grease his toug.”
She became excited and sat up straighter in her chair, and her strange little laughter rippled like a rill among pebbles.
“I threw a big rose without a stem upon the shroud,” she exclaimed, “and I cried out, ‘Niaz!’ which means, ‘Courage,’ and I mocked him, saying, ‘Djamouk Khagan,’ when he was only a Khan, of course; and I laughed and rubbed one finger against the other, crying out, ‘Toug ia glachakho!’ which means, ‘The toug is anointed.’ And which was very impudent of me, because Djamouk was a Sheik-el-Djebel and Khan of the Fifth Tower, and entitled to a toug and to eight men and a Toughtchi. And it is a grave offence to mock at the anointing of a toug.”
She paused, breathless, her splendid azure eyes sparkling with the memory of that girlish mischief. Then their brilliancy faded; she bit her lip and stole an uncertain glance at her husband.