Common humanity demands that."
"I don't need anything, thank you," she answered. "I don't ask for
anything, but to stay with the Legion."
"That's a point I must positively decline to argue, madam," he
informed her, shaking his head. "And, since there is nothing more to
say, I wish you a very good night!"
Bowing, he left the stateroom. He heard the door-catch snap. Somehow,
in some way as yet inexplicable to him, that sound caused him another
discomfort. For the first time in his life he had been having private
conversation with a woman--conversation that might almost have been
construed as intimate, since it had held secrets. For the first time
he had felt himself outwitted by a woman, beaten, made mock of. Now he
was being shut away from her.
Inwardly raging as he was, hot, confused, unhorsed, still a strange,
fingering insinuation of something agreeable had begun to waken in
him. The Master, not understanding it at all, or being able to analyze
sensations so foreign to all his previous thought and experience, cut
the Gordian knot of puzzlement by roundly cursing himself, by Allah
and the Prophet's beard, as a fool. And with a vastly disturbed mind
he returned along the white, gleaming corridor--that dipped and swayed
with the swift rush of _Nissr_--back to his own cabin.
Pages:
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143