“Immensely,” she replied, looking around her.
She became aware of a heavy perfume of hyacinths, and presently observed that there were many bowls of those flowers set upon little tables, and in niches in the wall.
“Yet its atmosphere is not truly of the Orient.”
“Are such apartments uncommon, then, in Persia?” asked Phil, striving valiantly to interest herself in the conversation.
“I do not say so,” he returned, crossing one delicate foot over the other, in languorous fashion. “But many things which are typically of the Orient would probably disillusion you, Miss Abingdon.”
“In what way?” she asked, wondering why Mrs. McMurdoch had not joined them.
“In many subtle ways. The real wonder and the mystery of the East lie not upon the surface, but beneath it. And beneath the East of to-day lies the East of yesterday.”
The speaker’s expression grew rapt, and he spoke in the mystic manner which she knew and now dreaded. Her anxiety for the return of Paul Harley grew urgent—a positive need, as, meeting the gaze of the long, magnetic eyes, she felt again, like the touch of cold steel, all the penetrating force of this man’s will. She was angrily aware of the fact that his gaze was holding hers hypnotically, that she was meeting it contrary to her wish and inclination. She wanted to look away but found herself looking steadily into the coal-black eyes of Ormuz Khan.
“The East of yesterday”—his haunting voice seemed to reach her from a great distance—“saw the birth of all human knowledge and human power; and to us the East of yesterday is the East of today.”
Phil became aware that a sort of dreamy abstraction was creeping over her, when in upon this mood came a sound which stimulated her weakening powers of resistance.