Anna Lombard, page 139 by Victoria Cross
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for a moment to shut out those god-like forms and faces, while I thought of all I had heard and read of them stories that would almost sear the paper they were written on, and scorch out Saxon eyes with shame to read. And to think that she this girl beside me, whose slender, delicate, white fingers held my soul and brain and heart in their hold, who controlled the very rush of blood through my veins; she, with all her delicacy and refinement of thought and feeling, was in the hands of one of these! I turned to her now with all this savage pain confusing my thoughts, and, altering some of them enough to give her sharp senses the clew to them all, I said something about the men before us being mere devils; and she turned her face fully to me, meeting my gaze with her eyes full of cool, insolent courage. It was the same look that shone in her father's face when he led his men up the defiles of death in the Border campaigns; the same look that shines in the eyes of the Saxon the world over, and makes him what he is the world's master.
"I am not afraid," she said, simply, answering all she knew was in my thoughts; and she turned to look down to the arena again.
I followed her eyes and at that instant the dance commenced. The Pathans had all fallen into line, one behind the other, forming a circle the entire circumference of the inclosure. At the first crash of the opening chord of music, forty flashing swords leaped into the air and were whirled, each one gleaming, round the head of each whiterobed Pathan as he plunged forward, breaking into a wild, musical chant in unison with the music. Now, I do not know what step was used in that dance, nor can I possibly conceive any European foot making one like it. I can only say that the Pathans moved round in that perfect circle, of which the proportions never varied, with marvelous rapidity, the broad blades of their swords playing like lightning above their heads the whole time, and their gait in the dance was the gait of the Pathan when he walks, somewhat ro