Yet both in an instantaneous flash remembered that first meeting. The
drawn sword sank, point downward. He stood motionless in the shattered
doorway, holding out a hand which commanded, and obtained, a
petrified, waiting silence from the armed horde whose faces glared
hatred and the lust of slaughter in the narrow space behind. Whatever
had been his resolution, whatever the detestation and contempt which
had filled him, all sank now into an ocean of reborn pain.
"Why are you here?" he asked sternly. "Why have you not fled?"
"We are all here," she answered. "None of us has fled. Did you not
know that?"
He looked about him. A flash of scorn rekindled in his somber eyes.
"You are alone. Have they deserted you?"
"They do not know that I am here. I crept back of my own free will--to
speak with you, Nehal."
Both hands clasped upon his sword-hilt, erect, a proud figure of
misfortune, he stood there and studied her, half-wonderingly,
half-contemptuously. The restless forces at his back were forgotten.
They were no more to him than the pawns with which his will played
life and death. He was their god and their faith. They waited for his
word to sweep out of his path the white-faced Englishwoman who held
him checked in the full course of his victory. But he did not speak to
them, but to her, in a low voice in which scorn still trembled.
"You are here, no doubt, to intercede for those others--or for
yourself.
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