Anak was in the crowd with her father, the old chief, and her affianced, Noa. She
had put on her silk sarong and kabaya, and some curious gold brooches that
were her mother’s. In her coal-black hair she had stuck some sprays of the
sweet-smelling chumpaka flower. On her slender bare feet were sandals
cunningly wrought in colored beads. Her soft brown eyes glowed with
excitement, and she edged away from the punghulo’s side until she stood close
up in front, so near that she could almost touch the sarong of the Tuan Hakim as
he read.
The Prince had grown so since he left that she scarcely knew him, and save for
the narrow silk sarong about his waist, he was dressed in the English clothes of a
Lieutenant of his Highness’s artillery. In the front of his rimless cap shone the
arms of Johore set in diamonds, exactly as his father, the Governor, wore them.
He paused and smiled as he thanked the cringing Tuan Hakim.
The blood rushed to the girl’s cheeks, and she nearly fell down at his feet. She
realized but dimly that Noa was plucking at her kabaya, wishing her to go with
him to see the bungalow that his father was building for them.
“The posts are to be of polished nebong” he was saying, “the wood-work of
maranti wood from Pahang; and there is to be a cote, ever so cunningly woven
of green and yellow bamboo, for your ring-doves, under the attap of the great
eaves above the door.”
She turned wearily toward her lover, and the bright look faded from her comely
face. With a half-uttered sigh she drew off her sandals and tucked them carefully
beneath the silver zone that held her sarong in place.
“Anak,” he said softly, as they left the hot, red streets, filled with lumbering
bullock-carts and omnipresent rickshas, “why do you look away when I talk of
our marriage? Is it because the Koran teaches modesty in woman, or is it
because you are over-proud of your husband when you see him among other
men?”
But the girl was not listening.
He looked at her keenly, and as he saw the red blood mantle her cheek, he
smiled and went on:—