"Sly devil, pretending it was a rug he was so absorbed in. . . ."
And, since it was but an amorous escapade, Diane's unbelievable speculations were replaced by thoughts reasonable enough not to be terrifying.
That very night, Clarke was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his studio, full under the red glow of a tall bronze mosque lamp. Before him, shimmering in the moonlight that streamed in through the French windows, lay the rug from Samarcand, mysterious and golden, with its pale sapphire corner pieces glittering like a distant sea viewed through a cleft between two mountain crests.
All the witchery and ecstasy that had ever been lost in the entire world were reassembled, pulsing in the silken pile which he contemplated. And this was the night, the Night of Power, when Fate stalked through the corridors of the world like a colossus just risen from an age-old throne of granite, resistless and unconquerable. Clarke had spent so many nights and days of staring that it was inevitable that there must be such a night. He saw more than the wonder before him: in place of the marvel woven by deft, forgotten hands, there gleamed enchantingly as through moon-touched mist a garden in the valley of Zarab-shan.
Then came a faint, oddly accented drumming and piping, music to whose tune dead years reassembled their bones and danced forth from their graves. And their ghosts as they danced exhaled an overwhelming sweetness that made Clarke's brain reel and glow, and his blood surge madly in anticipation of that which he knew must follow.
Then out of the blackness just beyond the range of the ruddy mosque lamp and full into the moonlight that marched slowly across the rug came a slim Yellow Girl, diaphanously garbed and veiled. Her anklets clicked faintly; and very faint was the tinkle of the pendant that adorned her unusual coiffure.
"All these many days I have sought you, my lord," she began, as she extended her arms in welcome. "But in vain, until tonight, when at last I parted the veil and crossed the Border."
Clarke nodded understandingly, and looked full into her dark, faintly slanted eyes.
"And I have been thinking of you," he began, "ever since someone sent me this rug on which you stand. It is strange how this rug could bridge the gap of twenty years and bring into my very house a glimpse of the valley of Zarab-shan. And stranger yet that you could esecape from your father's house and find me here. Though strangest of all, time has not touched you, when by all reason you should be old, and leathery, and past forty. . . . Yet you are lovelier now than you were then, by that fountain in a garden near Samarcand."
"It is not strange," contradicted the Yellow Girl, as she pirouetted with dainty feet across the moon-lapped silk. "For you see me now as I was when I wove my soul into this very rug."
Clarke smiled incredulously; which was illogical enough, since, compared with the girl's presence, nothing else should be incredible.
"How can that be, Yellow Girl, seeing that we two met one evening twenty years ago, whereas this rug was woven when the Great Khan sat enthroned in Samarcand and reproved the Persian Hanz for his careless disposal of the Great Khan's favorite cities. This was the joy of kings hundreds of years before you and I were born"
"Before the last time we were born," corrected the Yellow Girl. "But the first time—at least, the first time that I can
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