“So Rome treats traitors!” said a voice, that might have been either man's.
But instantly there was another vision, of ten thousand wolves baying down a Himalayan gorge in winter-time, the sleet frozen stiff on their fur and their tongues hanging. Eye and fang flashed altogether and made one gleam.
“Choose!” said a voice.
So he chose. He nodded. The men saluted him, and the wounded man was helped away to die. And then she came, angry as a flash of lightning, to spring at him and cling to him and call him names--begging, demanding, ordering, crying--abusing him and praising him in turn. He shook his head. She sobbed, but he shook his head again and pointed westward. Then she took him by the hand and led him away, not looking at his face again.
The crystal ball grew clouded. Yasmini's breath came and went as if she were running in a race, and her pressure on King's fingers was actually painful. The mist dissolved, and King forgot the pressure--forgot everything. The man in armor lay dead on his back in the cave on the wooden bed, and she bent over him, dagger in hand.
“Ah!” said Yasmini, her teeth chattering. “But what else could she do?” The mist closed in again and the crystal grew opaque. “The future!” she begged. “It is the future I must know! Ye old gods, tell me! Show me!”
The mist turned red. The crystal ball became as it were a ball of fire revolving within itself. The fire turned to blood, and the blood to fire again. The very cavern that they knelt in seemed to sway. Yasmini screamed and moaned. She loosed King's hands to cover her own eyes.
And as she did that King sank, like a sack half-empty and toppled over sidewise on the floor asleep.
He neither dreamed nor was conscious of anything, but slept like a dead man, having fought against her mesmerism harder than he knew.
Statesmen, generals, outlaws, all make their big mistakes and manage to recover. Very nearly always it is an apparently little mistake that does most damage in the end, something unnoticeable at the time, that grows in geometrical proportion, minus instead of plus.