"Oh.... And possibly you gave Sanang a chance because he still holds your--affections!"
She said, crimson with the pain of the accusation: "I tore my heart out of his keeping.... I told you that.... And, believing--trying to believe what you say to me, I have tried to tear my soul out of the claws of Erlik.... Why are you angry?"
"I don"t know.... I"m not angry.... The whole horrible situation is breaking my nerve, I guess.... With whom were you talking before I came in?"
After a silence the girl"s smile glimmered.
"I"m afraid you won"t like it if I tell you."
"Why not?"
"You--such things perplex and worry you.... I am afraid you won"t like me any the better if I tell you who it was I had been talking with."
His intent gaze never left her. "I want you to tell me," he repeated.
"I--I was talking with Sa-n"sa," she faltered.
"With whom?"
"With Sa-n"sa.... We called her Sansa."
"Who the d.i.c.kens is Sansa?"
"We were three comrades at the Temple," she said timidly, "--Yulun, Sansa, and myself. We loved each other. We always went to the Lake of the Ghosts together--for protection----"
"Go on!"
"Sansa was a girl of the Aroulads, born at Buldak--as was Temujin. The night she was born three moon-rainbows made circles around her Yalak.
The Baroula.s.s hors.e.m.e.n saw this and prayed loudly in their saddles. Then they galloped to Yian and came crawling on their bellies to Sanang Noane with the news of the miracle. And Sanang came with a thousand riders in leather armour. And, "What is this child"s name?" he shouted, riding into the Yalak with his black banners flapping around him like devil"s wings.
"A poor Manggoud came out of the tent of skins, carrying the new born infant, and touched his head to Sanang"s stirrup. "This babe is called Tchagane," he said, trembling all over. "No!" cries Sanang, "she is called Sansa. Give her to me and may Erlik seize you!"
"And he took the baby on his saddle in front of him and struck his spurs deep; and so came Sansa to Yian under a roaring rustle of black silk banners.... It is so written in the Book of Iron.... Allahou Ekber."
Cleves had leaned his elbow on the table, his forehead rested in his palm.
Perhaps he was striving in a bewildered way to reconcile such occult and amazing things with the year 1920--with the commonplace and noisy city of New York--with this pretty, modern, sunlit sitting-room in the Ritz-Carlton on Madison Avenue--with this girl in her morning negligee opposite, her coffee and melon fragrant at her elbow, her wonderful blue eyes resting on him.
"Sansa," he repeated slowly, as though striving to grasp even a single word from the confusion of names and phrases that were sounding still in his ears like the vibration of distant and unfamiliar seas.
"Is this the girl you were talking with just now? In--in _this_ room?"
he added, striving to understand.
"Yes."
"She wasn"t here, of course."
"Her body was not."
"Oh!"
Tressa said in her sweet, humorous way: "You must try to accustom yourself to such things, Victor. You know that Yulun talks to me.... I wanted to talk to Sansa. The longing awakened me. So--_I made the effort_."
"And she came--I mean the part of her which is not her body."
"Yes, she came. We talked very happily while I was bathing and dressing.
Then we came in here. She is such a darling!"
"Where is she?"
"In Yian, feeding her silk-worms and making a garden. You see, Sansa is quite wealthy now, because when the j.a.panese came she filled a bullock cart with great lumps of spongy gold from the Temple and filled another cart with Yu-stone, and took the Hezar of Baroula.s.s hors.e.m.e.n on guard at the Lake of the Ghosts. And with this Keutch, riding a Soubz horse, and dressed like an Urieng lancer, my pretty little comrade Tchagane, who is called Sansa, marched north preceded by two kettle-drums and a toug with two tails----"
Tressa"s clear laughter checked her; she clapped her hands, breathless with mirth at the picture she evoked.
"Kai!" she laughed; "what adorable impudence has Sansa! Neither Tchortcha nor Khiounnou dared ask her who were her seven ancestors! No!
And when her caravan came to the lovely Yliang river, my darling Sansa rode out and grasped the lance from her Tougtchi and drove the point deep into the fertile soil, crying in a clear voice: "A place for Tchagane and her people! Make room for the toug!"
"Then her Manggoud, who carried the spare steel tip for her lance, got out of his saddle and, gathering a handful of mulberry leaves, rubbed the shaft of the lance till it was all pale green.
""Toug iaglachakho!" cries my adorable Sansa! "Build me here my Urdu![2]--my Mocalla![3] And upon it pitch my tent of skins!"
[Footnote 2: Urdu = An imperial encampment.]
[Footnote 3: Mocalla = A platform used as a Moslem pulpit.]
Again Tressa"s laughter checked her, and she strove to control it with the jade ring pressed to her lips.
"Oh, Victor," she added in a stifled voice, looking at him out of eyes full of mischief, "you don"t realise how funny it was--Sansa and her toug and her Urdu--Oh, Allah!--the bones of Tchinguiz must have rattled in his tomb!"
Her infectious laughter evoked a responsive but perplexed smile from Cleves; but it was the smile of a bewildered man who has comprehended very little of an involved jest; and he looked around at the modern room as though to find his bearings.
Suddenly Tressa leaned forward swiftly and laid one hand on his.
"You don"t think all this is very funny. You don"t like it," she said in soft concern.
"It isn"t that, Tressa. But this is New York City in the year 1920. And I can"t--I absolutely can not get into touch--hook up, mentally, with such things--with the unreal Oriental life that is so familiar to you."
She nodded sympathetically: "I know. You feel like a Mergued Pagan from Lake Bakal when all the lamps are lighted in the Mosque;--like a camel driver with his jade and gold when he enters Yarkand at sunrise."
"Probably I feel like that," said Cleves, laughing outright. "I take your word, dear, anyway."
But he took more; he picked up her soft hand where it still rested on his, pressed it, and instantly reddened because he had done it. And Tressa"s bright flush responded so quickly that neither of them understood, and both misunderstood.
The girl rose with heightened colour, not knowing why she stood up or what she meant to do. And Cleves, misinterpreting her emotion as a silent rebuke to the invasion of that convention tacitly accepted between them, stood up, too, and began to speak carelessly of commonplace things.
She made the effort to reply, scarcely knowing what she was saying, so violently had his caress disturbed her heart,--and she was still speaking when their telephone rang.