‘I have prayed,’ said Ameera after a long pause, ’I have prayed for two things.  First, that I may die in thy stead if thy death is demanded, and in the second that I may die in the place of the child.  I have prayed to the Prophet and to Beebee Miriam [the Virgin Mary].  Thinkest thou either will hear?’

‘From thy lips who would not hear the lightest word?’

’I asked for straight talk, and thou hast given me sweet talk.  Will my prayers be heard?’

‘How can I say?  God is very good.’

’Of that I am not sure.  Listen now.  When I die, or the child dies, what is thy fate?  Living, thou wilt return to the bold white mem-log, for kind calls to kind.’

‘Not always.’

’With a woman, no; with a man it is otherwise.  Thou wilt in this life, later on, go back to thine own folk.  That I could almost endure, for I should be dead.  But in thy very death thou wilt be taken away to a strange place and a paradise that I do not know.’

‘Will it be paradise?’

’Surely, for who would harm thee?  But we two—­I and the child—­shall be elsewhere, and we cannot come to thee, nor canst thou come to us.  In the old days, before the child was born, I did not think of these things; but now I think of them always.  It is very hard talk.’

’It will fall as it will fall.  To-morrow we do not know, but to-day and love we know well.  Surely we are happy now.’

’So happy that it were well to make our happiness assured.  And thy Beebee Miriam should listen to me; for she is also a woman.  But then she would envy me!  It is not seemly for men to worship a woman.’

Holden laughed aloud at Ameera’s little spasm of jealousy.

’Is it not seemly?  Why didst thou not turn me from worship of thee, then?’

’Thou a worshipper!  And of me?  My king, for all thy sweet words, well I know that I am thy servant and thy slave, and the dust under thy feet.  And I would not have it otherwise.  See!’

Before Holden could prevent her she stooped forward and touched his feet; recovering herself with a little laugh she hugged Tota closer to her bosom.  Then, almost savagely—­

’Is it true that the bold white mem-log live for three times the length of my life?  Is it true that they make their marriages not before they are old women?’

‘They marry as do others—­when they are women.’

‘That I know, but they wed when they are twenty-five.  Is that true?’

‘That is true.’

’Ya illah!  At twenty-five!  Who would of his own will take a wife even of eighteen?  She is a woman—­aging every hour.  Twenty-five!  I shall be an old woman at that age, and—­Those mem-log remain young for ever.  How I hate them!’ ‘What have they to do with us?’

’I cannot tell.  I know only that there may now be alive on this earth a woman ten years older than I who may come to thee and take thy love ten years after I am an old woman, gray-headed, and the nurse of Tota’s son.  That is unjust and evil.  They should die too.’