THE RECLUSE
“Kwan-Yin aid me!” she breathed and pushed the Tartar away with all her strength.
He had not expected the sudden thrust from this easy prey and stepping back, his heels came abruptly against the low stone border about the poppy bed.
Wildly his arms flailed the air while he sought to regain his balance and he brought up hard against the pedestal of the dog.
Events came swiftly then, thru the ever thickening haze upon the garden. Abruptly the ancient and crumbling pedestal was not and the figure of the dog for a split second hung in air, accompanied by an awful grinding roar as though all the hounds of hell were baying down their quarry!
The mist grew thicker, but she knew that the Fu-dog had not failed her; that he had launched into the spring for which he had crouched thru the centuries. And as the derisive yelping on the wall changed to yells of amazement and fear, she tried to smile and collapsed upon the corpse of Arslan.
They would be together now; he had fought a good fight and failed; a heroic failure, fighting to the last, but now another would fight for them; the Fu-dog was awake!
Somewhere, worlds away, the Fu-dog was fighting,—was fighting—fighting—” and darkness closed down upon her.
5
All the garden was filled with men, pitying and gentle, some with tears upon their cheeks, while, weeping unrestrainedly the aged nurse knelt by her.
“Alas,” wailed the old woman, “she has mounted the golden dragon and has been carried beyond the stars, through the Gates of Contentment.
“Our lives shall be a long woe and a great sorrow.”
Su-rah stirred and opened her eyes. The keening hurt her head. Why must they torture her?—and then she saw all around her the gaudiness and glitter of the soldiers’ showy painted armor.
Saw too, that the Tartars all were gone and saw that he who bent over her, his face set with pain and stained from an ugly scalp wound—was Arslan!
With a soft coo of delight, she lifted her arms to him and he caught her close.
A moment he held her thus and she was thinking swiftly, planning for the future.
Her father and three brothers were dead; she knew and felt deep sorrow for them. Much honor and many prayers there should be to their memory. But not all was lost. Now she was able to choose a lover for herself. Now she was the only one remaining of the House of Chan!
Now the door was open to happiness!
“I love you,” she whispered softly and with the words passed through the door.
It was most unmaidenly, but Arslan would understand.
They bore her tenderly to a litter, past the bed of poppies and she shuddered at the thing that lay there and turned her head away.
Now the poppies were stained a deeper red, on stem as well as petal and broken shards of green porcelain were thick among the flowers. In the corner of the bed lay the Tartar, with his arm wide flung, but the upper part of his body and head was hidden beneath the fore-quarters of the Fu-dog.
The fangs were driven deep thru the Tartar’s skull and all the cavity of its wide open jaws was an oozing pulp of blood and brains.
She felt his fixed regard upon her when they placed her in the litter and while they were carrying her from the garden. She felt as though she must look back and doing so, just before they reached the gate, she cried out.
They turned, startled, to look where her pointing finger gestured.
At the angle in which she was staring a smear of Tartar blood upon the dog’s head appeared as though his eye had slowly closed, but the others had not seen, nor could they see, the seeming wink.
