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Speak, I pray thee. I listen." Behar Asor remained silent a moment, biting his forefinger. There was something in the action strongly reminiscent of a cunning, treacherous animal. "Thou hast laughed at thine own power," he said at last, "though I have sworn to thee that, as in my time, so today, the swords that sleep in a hundred thousand sheathes would awake at thy word.
Behar Asor had ceased to watch him, but lay motionless, with his face covered by the white mantle which he wore about his shoulders. The first storm of angry disappointment over, he had relapsed into a passive oriental acceptance of the inevitable, which did not, however, exclude an undercurrent of bitter brooding and contempt. Some time passed before either of the two men spoke.
Behar Asor and the prince paced slowly backward and forward in the chief entrance hall of the palace, plunged in a conversation which was to mark a final stage in their relationship toward each other. Both knew it, and on both faces was written the same determination a determination curiously tempered and moulded by the character of the man himself.
Accordingly he gave them his oath, and ejected them out of the city, and he put therein a garrison of his own. But Jonathan removed out of Galilee, and from the waters which are called Gennesar, for there he was before encamped, and came into the plain that is called Asor, without knowing that the enemy was there.
"The sons inherit not always the courage of their fathers," Behar Asor answered, with a bitter significance. Nehal Singh had wandered back to the throne, as though drawn thither by some irresistible attraction, and stood there motionless, his arms folded across his breast. "Do not blame me," he said at last. "No man can go against himself. Were it in my power, I would do thy will.
Behar Asor struggled up into a sitting posture, his features rendered more malignant by a glow of fierce triumph. "Ay, the barrier has been there!" he cried. "It is I who have held it erect all these years when they thought me dead and powerless. It is I who have kept thee spotless and undefiled, Nehal Singh, thou alone of all thy race and of all thy caste!
At last Behar Asor lifted his head and glanced quickly sidewise at the figure seated on the throne. Nehal Singh's eyes were now entirely closed and seemed to sleep. Such a proceeding would have been excusable enough in the suffocating heat, but the sight drove the old man into a fresh paroxysm of indignation. "Sleepest thou, Nehal Singh?" he demanded, in a harsh, rasping voice.
In those days I thought and planned for the great hour when I should seek revenge for thee and for myself. That is all past." "Why all past?" Behar Asor demanded. "Because the truth drifted in to me from the outer world. I saw that everywhere there was peace such as my land, even after thy account, has rarely known.
The little thing in Nehal Singh's life had been a woman's face. It shone between him and his old gods; it smiled at him from amidst the shadows of his imagination, beckoning him unceasingly to follow. And he was following with the reckless speed of a man who had been kept inactive too long at the starting point of life. "I am weary of all that has hitherto been," he told Behar Asor.
As it is, without cause or reason I can not draw my sword against men whose fathers have made my heart beat with sympathy and admiration." Behar Asor sank back in an attitude of absolute despair. "I am accursed!" he said. With a smothered sigh, Nehal Singh mounted the steps and seated himself.
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