“Kai!” she laughed; “what adorable impudence has Sansa! Neither Tchortcha nor Khiounnou dared ask her who were her seven ancestors! No! And when her caravan came to the lovely Yliang river, my darling Sansa rode out and grasped the lance from her Tougtchi and drove the point deep into the fertile soil, crying in a clear voice: ‘A place for Tchagane and her people! Make room for the toug!’
“Then her Manggoud, who carried the spare steel tip for her lance, got out of his saddle and, gathering a handful of mulberry leaves, rubbed the shaft of the lance till it was all pale green.
“‘Toug iaglachakho!’ cries my adorable Sansa! ‘Build me here my Urdu![2]—my Mocalla![3] And upon it pitch my tent of skins!”
Again Tressa’s laughter checked her, and she strove to control it with the jade ring pressed to her lips.
“Oh, Victor,” she added in a stifled voice, looking at him out of eyes full of mischief, “you don’t realise how funny it was—Sansa and her toug and her Urdu—Oh, Allah!—the bones of Tchinguiz must have rattled in his tomb!”
Her infectious laughter evoked a responsive but perplexed smile from Cleves; but it was the smile of a bewildered man who has comprehended very little of an involved jest; and he looked around at the modern room as though to find his bearings.
Suddenly Tressa leaned forward swiftly and laid one hand on his.
“You don’t think all this is very funny. You don’t like it,” she said in soft concern.
“It isn’t that, Tressa. But this is New York City in the year 1920. And I can’t—I absolutely can not get into touch—hook up, mentally, with such things—with the unreal Oriental life that is so familiar to you.”
She nodded sympathetically: “I know. You feel like a Mergued Pagan from Lake Baïkal when all the lamps are lighted in the Mosque;—like a camel driver with his jade and gold when he enters Yarkand at sunrise.”