So far Joanna could reason readily enough, for there was a vast fund of
wisdom stored beneath her wrinkled ugliness. But her Eastern
limitation stopped her there. She could not hold loyalty to more than
one cause, or to more than one offshoot of that cause, in the same
shrewd head at once. She decided that at all costs Jaimihr must be out
of the way so that the Maharaja might be left to argue with the priests
alone. For the moment no other thought occurred to her.
The means seemed ready to her hand. A peculiarity of the East, which
is democratic in most ways under the veneer of swaggering autocracy,
that servants of the very lowest caste may speak, and argue on
occasion, with men who would shudder at the prospect of defilement
from their touch. There was nothing in the least outrageous in the
proposition that the sweeper, waiting in a corner for the procession to
emerge again so that he might curl on his mat and sleep undisturbed
when it had gone, should dare to approach Jaimihr and address him. He
would run no small risk of being beaten by the guards; but, on the
other hand, should he catch jaimihr's ear and interest him, he would be
safe.
"Wouldst thou win Jaimihr's favor?" asked Joanna, creeping up beside
him, and whispering with all the suggestiveness she could assume.
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