“Aziza! Aziza Nurmahal!”
His call echoed through the vaulted, white-stuccoed halls where slept the princess' ancestors, from the rough shepherd who, followed by a few thousand yellow-skinned, high-cheeked men on horseback, had swept out of Central Asia, conquering the world from Pekin to the gates of Berlin, to the last male member of the Gengizkhani clan, the princess' father, who had spent a life-time sidestepping the financial traps, the “concessions,” of these same Occidentals whom once his ancestors had subjugated and ruled with rope and flame and scimitar.
The ironic thought flashed through Hector's mind even as, from an inner chamber, came an answering call:
“Thank Allah!”
Then hysterical laughter; a man's acrid curse; a clanking of steel against steel—and Hector reached the chamber whence the cry had come, took in the scene at a glance—the girl, weakened, out of breath, but still pluckily defending herself against Abderrahman Yahiah Khan—and he was at him, the point of his weapon dancing before him like a lambent flame.
Up till this moment Abderrahman Yahiah Khan had been merely playing with the princess; had not wished to do her a bodily injury. Perhaps, now, suddenly, his love for her—for love it was, though rough, boisterous, cruel—turned into the primitive desire of primitive man that she, who could not be his, should never belong to anybody else, chiefly not to this upstart of a saheb who, according to Koom Khan's tale, had gained her love and was aspiring to the throne.
