That put another thought in his head. It was less than two hours since Yasmini danced in the arena. It might well be much less than that since she had taken off her bracelets. He laid a finger on the dead man's stone-cold hand and let it rest so for a minute. Then, running it slowly up the wrist, he touched the gold. It was warm. He repeated the test on the woman's wrist. Hers was warm, too. Both bracelets had been worn by a living being within an hour--
“Probably within minutes!”
He muttered and frowned in thought, and then suddenly jumped backward. The leather curtain near the bed had moved on its bronze rod.
“Aren't they dears?” a voice said in English behind him. “Aren't they sweet?”
He had jumped so as to face about, and somebody laughed at him. Yasmini stood not two arms' lengths away, lovelier than the dead woman because of the merry life in her, young and warm, aglow, but looking like the dead woman and the woman of the frieze--the woman of the lamp--bowls--the statue--come to life, speaking to him in English more sweetly than if it had been her mother tongue. The English abuse their language. Yasmini caressed it and made it do its work twice over.
Being dressed as a native, he salaamed low. Knowing him for what he was, she gave him the senna-stained tips of her warm fingers to kiss, and he thought she trembled when he touched them. But a second later she had snatched them away and was treating him to raillery.
“Man of pills and blisters!” she said, “tell me how those bodies are preserved! Spill knowledge from that learned skull of thine!”
He did not answer. He never shone in conversation at any time, having made as many friends as enemies by saying nothing until the spirit moves him. But she did not know that yet.
“If I knew for certain why those two did not turn to worms,” she went on, “almost I would choose to die now, while I am beautiful! Think of the fogy museum men!” (She called them by a far less edifying name, really, for the East is frank in that way, especially in its use of other tongues.) “What would they say, think you, King sahib, if they found us two dead beside those two? Would not that be a mystery? Don't you love mysteries? Speak, man, speak! Has Khinjan struck you dumb?”
But he did not speak. He was staring at her arm, where two whitish marks on the skin betrayed that bracelets had been.