"I am from the North," she said, "and the North is cold; there is little mercy in the hills, and I was weaned amid them. Yet--would the sahib not better beg of me?" "How d'ye mean?" asked Kirby, surprised into speaking English. "_Three days_ ago there came a wind that told _me_ of war--of a world-war, surely not this time stillborn. Two years ago the same wind brought me news of its conception, though the talk of the world was then of universal peace and of horror at a war that was. Now, to-night, this greatest war is loose, born and grown big within three days, but conceived two years ago--Russia, Germany, Austria, France are fighting--is it not so? Am I wrong?" "I came to ask about Ranjoor Singh," said Colonel Kirby, twisting at his closely cropped mustache. There was a hint of iron in his voice, and he was obviously not the man to threaten and not fulfil. But she laughed in his face. "All in good time!" she answered him. "You shall beg for your Ranjoor Singh, and then perhaps he shall step forth from the burning house! But first you shall know why you _must_ beg." She clapped her hands, and a maid appeared. She gave an order, and the maid brought sherbet that Kirby sniffed suspiciously before tasting. Again she laughed deliciously. "Does the sahib think that he could escape alive from this room did I will otherwise?" she asked. "Would I need to drug--I who have so many means?" Now, it is a maxim of light cavalry that the best means of defense lies in attack; a threat of force should be met by a show of force, and force by something quicker. Kirby's eyes and his adjutant's met. Each felt for his hidden pistol. But she laughed at them with mirth that was so evidently unassumed that they blushed to their ears. "Look!" she said; and they looked. Two great gray cobras, male and female, swayed behind them less than a yard away, balanced for the strike, hoods raised. The awful, ugly black eyes gleamed with malice. And a swaying cobra's head is not an easy thing to hit with an automatic-pistol bullet, supposing, for wild imagination's sake, that the hooded devil does not strike first. "It is not wise to move!" purred Yasmini. They did not see her make any sign, though she must have made one, for their eyes were fixed on the swaying snakes, and their brains were active with the problem of whether to try to shoot or not. It seemed to them that the snakes reached a resolution first, and struck. And in the same instant as each drew his pistol the hooded messengers of death were jerked out of sight by hands that snatched at horsehair from behind the hangings. "I have many such!" smiled Yasmini, and they turned to meet her eyes again, hoping she could not read the fear in theirs. "But that is not why the sahib shall beg of me." Kirby was not too overcome to notice the future tense. "That is only a reason why the sahibs should forget their Western manners. But--if the pistols please the sahibs--"