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Updated: June 13, 2025
"She mean when you your reverend uncle," said Jeekie, wagging his great head, "she think you identical man." "What troubles you, Vernoon," the Asika asked softly, then added anything but softly to Jeekie, "Translate, you dog, and be swift."
"Vernoon," she said, "I know that you do not love me as I love you, but the love will come, since for your sake I will change myself. I will grow gentle; I will shed no more blood; that of the Mungana shall be the last, and even him I would spare if I could, only while he lives I may not marry you; it is the one law that is stronger than I am, and if I broke it I and you would die at once.
Go away, Vernoon, go away, you have angered me, and if it were not for what you have said about that new law of mercy, I think that I would cut your throat," and again she boxed Jeekie's ears and kicked him in the shins. Alan rose and bowed himself towards the door while she stood with her back towards him, sobbing.
Hitherto she had always repelled him, but this night it was otherwise. "How did you come here?" he asked in a more gentle voice than he generally used towards her. Noting the change in his tone, she smiled shyly and even coloured a little, then answered: "This house has many secrets, Vernoon. When you are lord of it you shall learn them all, till then I may not tell them to you.
Vernoon, five centuries have gone by since an Asika was really wed to a foreign man who wore a green turban and called himself a son of the Prophet, a man with a hooked nose and flashing eyes, who reviled our gods until they slew him, even though he was the beloved of their priestess.
"Felt the hook?" he muttered. "I do not understand." "You are very forgetful," she answered. "Vernoon, we have lived and loved before, who were twin souls from the first. That man now, whom I told you lived once on the great river called the Nile, have you no memory of him? Well, well, let it be, I will tell you afterwards.
At first Alan thought that the thing was a joke, and that the men had merely been made mad drunk, till catching sight of their eyes in the moonlight, he perceived that they were in great pain and turned indignantly to remonstrate with the Asika. "Be silent, Vernoon," she said savagely, "blood is your orunda and I respect it.
"My spirit does not remember when it was built, Vernoon, so old is it, but I think that the Asiki were once a big and famous people who traded to the water upon the west, and even to the water on the east, and that was how those white men became their slaves and the Munganas of their queens.
"Your lips are free now," she said; "kiss my hand after the fashion of your own country," and she stretched it out to Alan, leaving him no choice but to obey her. "Why," she went on mischievously, taking his hand and in turn touching it with her red lips, "why, are you a thief, Vernoon? That ring was mine and you have stolen it. How did you steal that ring?"
"No, no," she answered, "the weather is very fine. It is I I who have rained because I thought you die." She wiped his forehead with the soft linen of her robe, then went on, "But you will not die; say that you will live, say that you will live for me, Vernoon." He looked at her, and feeble though he was, the awfulness of the situation sank into his soul. "I hope that I shall live," he answered.
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