smiling darkly.

She looked down between them at the thing that but a minute since had
lived, and loved perhaps as well as hated.

"Shame on you, Jaimihr-sahib!" she said, shuddering. A year ago she
would have fallen from her pony in a swoon, but one year of Howrah and
its daily horrors had so hardened her that she could look and loathe
without the saving grace of losing consciousness.

"The shame would have been easier to realize, had I taken more than one
stroke!" he answered irritably, still blocking the way on his great
horse, still twisting at his mustache point, still looking down at her
through eyes that blazed a dozen accumulated centuries' store of
lawless ambition. He was proud of that back-handed swipe of his that
would cleave a man each time at one blow from shoulder-joint to ribs,
severing the backbone. A woman of his own race would have been singing
songs in praise of him and his skill in swordsman-ship already; but no
woman of his own race would have looked him in the eye like that and
dared him, nor have done what she did next. She leaned over and
swished his charger with her little whip, and slipped past him.

He swore, deep and fiercely, as he spurred and wheeled, and cantered
after her. His great stallion could overhaul her pony in a minute,
going stride for stride; the wall was more than two miles long with no
break in it other than locked gates; there was no hurry. He watched
her through half-closed, glowering, appraising eyes as he cantered in
her wake, admiring the frail, slight figure in the gray cotton habit,
and bridling his desire to make her--seize her reins, and halt, and
make her--admit him master of the situation.