O'Rourke
V.
The red glow of barracks burning--an ayah from whom a dagger has been
taken locked in another room--the knowledge that there are fifty thousand
Aryan brothers, itching to rebel, within a stone's throw--and two
lone protectors of an alien race intent on torturing a High Priest,
each and every one of these is a disturbing feature. No woman, and
least of all a young woman such as Ruth Bellairs, can be blamed for
being nervous under the stress of such conditions or for displaying
a certain amount of feminine unreasonableness.
She stood shivering for a minute and watched spellbound while Mahommed
Khan held the hot coal closer and even closer to the High Priest's
naked foot. The priest writhed in anticipation of the agony and turned
his eyes away, and as he turned them they met Ruth's. High priests
of a religion that includes sooth-saying and prophecy and bribery
of gods among its rites are students of human nature, and especially
of female human nature. Knowledge of it and of how it may be gulled,
and when, is the first essential of their calling.
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