"Good!" she said.
"So now I promise thee something," said Ranjoor Singh sternly. "To-morrow—to-day—I shall eat black shame on thy account, for this is thy doing. Later I will go to France. Later again, I will come back and—"
"And love me as they all do!" laughed Yasmini, pushing him away.
If I must lie, who love the truth,
(And honour bids me lie),
I'll tell a lordly lie forsooth
To be remembered by.
If I must cheat, whose fame is fair,
And fret my fame away,
I'll do worse than the devil dare
That men may rue the day!
CHAPTER XIII
Beyond question Yasmini is a craftsman of amazing skill, and her genius—as does all true genius—extends to the almost infinite consideration of small details. The medium in which she works—human weakness—affords her unlimited opportunity; and she owns the trick, that most great artists win, of not letting her general plan be known before the climax. Neither friend nor enemy is ever quite sure which is which until she solves the problem to the enemy's confusion.
But Yasmini could have failed in this case through overmuch finesse. She was not used to Germans, and could not realize until too late that her compliance with this man's every demand only served to make him more peremptory and more one-sided in his point of view. From a mere agent, offering the almost unimaginable in return for mere promises, he had grown already into a dictator, demanding action as a prelude to reward. He had even threatened to cause her, Yasmini, to be reported to the police unless she served his purpose better!
If she had obeyed the general and had picked a trooper for the business in hand, it is likely that Yasmini would have had to write a failure to her account. She had come perilously near to obedience on this occasion, and it had been nothing less than luck that put Ranjoor Singh into her hands, luck being the pet name of India's kindest god. Ranjoor Singh was needed in the instant when he came to bring the German back to earth and a due sense of proportion.
The Sikh had a rage in his heart that the German mistook for zeal and native ferocity; his manners became so brusk under the stress of it that they might almost have been Prussian, and, met with its own reflection, that kind of insolence grows limp.
Having agreed to lie, Ranjoor Singh lied with such audacity and so much skill that it would have needed Yasmini to dare disbelieve him.