He heard the door slam; he stumbled, caught at the back of a chair while his senses and sight were clearing.
“By heavens!” he whispered with ashen lips, “you—you are a sorceress—or something. What—what, are you doing to me?”
There was no answer. And when his vision cleared a little more he saw her crouched on the floor, her head against the locked door, listening, perhaps—or sobbing—he scarcely understood which until the quiver of her shoulders made it plainer.
When at last Cleves went to her and bent over and touched her she looked up at him out of wet eyes, and her grief-drawn mouth quivered.
“I—I don’t know,” she sobbed, “if he truly stole away my soul—there—there in the temple dusk of Yian. But he—he stole my heart—for all his wickedness—Sanang, Prince of the Yezidees—and I have been fighting him for it all these years—all these long years—fighting for what he stole in the temple dusk!... And now—now I have it back—my heart—all broken to pieces—here on the floor behind your—your bolted door.”
CHAPTER V
THE ASSASSINS
On the wall hung a map of Mongolia, that indefinite region a million and a half square miles in area, vast sections of which have never been explored.
Turkestan and China border it on the south, and Tibet almost touches it, not quite.