"To learn
treachery from treachery is a poor lesson. And thou canst not stay me.
What I will do I will do. Do not cross me again."
The old man, who had shrunk back, gasping and staring, against the marble
basin, pulled himself painfully upright.
"Ay, I did wrong," he said. "With my old hands I tried to forestall the
sword of Fate. For, mark me, the hour will come when thou wilt curse
thyself that thou didst stay my knife!"
He tottered slowly away, vanishing like a curious twisted shadow amidst
the deeper shadows of the columns.
Nehal Singh watched him till he was out of sight, and then, snapping the
dagger across his knee, flung the pieces into the water. They lay there,
at the bottom of the marble basin, sparkling and twinkling in the
sunshine. When he looked in, trying to conjure up once more the beautiful
face, it was always the dagger he saw. It was always the dagger he saw
when the memory of that short, violent scene came back to him--and it
came back often, springing up out of his subconscious self like an evil,
slinking shade that could never be wholly brought to rest. Yet he went on
resolutely. One barrier had given way--one more remained, and he flung
himself against it with a reckless determination which would have overcome
any resistance. But there was none. The old priest who had been his guide
and teacher welcomed him as he had always done, seated cross-legged at the
edge of the Sacred Tank, motionless, rigid, like some handsome bronze
statue of Buddha, whose eyes alone spoke of a fierce flowing life within.
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