"What is it—you fear him?"
"Yes, Sahib, he will claim Bootea; a Mahratta never keeps faith. There will be a fresh covenant, because he is like a beast of the jungle."
Barlow paced back and forth the small confine of the tent, muttering. "It's hell!" He pictured the Gulab in the harem of Nana Sahib—in a gaudy prison chained to a serpent. To interfere on her behalf would be to sacrifice what came first, his duty as an officer of state, to what would be called, undoubtedly, an infatuation. Elizabeth would take it that way; even his superiors would call it at least inexpedient, bad form. For a British officer to be interested or mixed up with a native woman, no matter how noble the impulse, would be a shatterment of both official and personal caste.
"I won't allow that," he declared vehemently, shifting into words his mental traverse.
Bootea had followed with her eyes his struggle; then she said: "The Sahib has heard of the women of the Rajputs who, with smiles on their lips faced death, who, when the time of the last danger came were not afraid?"
"Yes, Gulab. But for you it is not that way. You have said that I am your protector—I will be."
There was a smile on the girl's lips as she raised her eyes to Barlow's. "It is not permitted, Sahib; the gods have the matter in their lap. For a little—yes, perhaps. It is the time of the pilgrimage to the shrine of Omkar at Mandhatta, and Bootea will make the pilgrimage; at the shrine is the priest that told Bootea of her reincarnations, as I related to the Sahib."
A curious superstitious chill struck with full force upon the heart of Barlow. Kassim's story of Kumari revivified itself with startling remembrance. Was this the priest that, to save Kumari's sacrifice, had wafted her by occult or drug method from one embodied form into another, from Kumari to Bootea? It was so confusing, so overpowering in its clutch that he did not speak of it.
The girl was adding: "It is on the Sahib's way to Poona; there will be many from Karowlee at Mandhatta and I can return with them."
This seemed reasonable to Barlow; she would there be in the company of people not at war. And then, erratically, rebelliously, he felt a heart hunger; but he cursed this feeling as being vicious—it was. He smothered it, shoving it back into a niche of his mind, thinking he had locked it up—had turned a key in the door of the closet to hide the skeleton.