child. “If I were powerful and swore fealty to thee, thou wouldst be right in not trusting me. For, powerful, I would strive for yet more power, would try to usurp thy place—as I did in the past. But, shorn of my power, in thy hands, under the heel of thy mercy, thus deprived of everything except what thou wouldst grant me, I should be forced to be loyal to thee through self-defense!”
“Look here,” began Hector who, in his honest British way, was more indignant at the man's Jesuitic casuistry of reasoning than at his treachery.
But the governor continued, very gently:
“Grant me life, Heaven-Born, and I shall pay for it a thousand times over. For I love life and what life brings.” Here he winked, shamelessly, at the princess who, Oriental to the marrow, was beginning to admire, even respect, the man's enormous, serene astuteness. “Grant me life, and then fortune will come to thy hand, unasked, like a courtezan—or a dog.”
And it was racially, culturally typical of Aziza Nurmahal that she, who at first had been more intent upon the man's instant death than Hector Wade, was also first to forget her hatred the moment she understood that he would be more valuable to her alive than dead—an instance of that Oriental immorality which, at times, turns out to be decidedly more constructive and humane than the case-hardened prejudices, virtues, and ethics of the moral-ridden Occident.
Seeing Hector hesitate, she took charge of the situation.
