"Pah! Beastly!" muttered Lance. "I'd sooner have no religion at all."

Roy smiled at him, sidelong--and said nothing. It _was_ beastly: but it
matched the rest. It was in keeping with the dusky rooms, all
damp-incrusted, the narrow passages and screens of marble tracery; the
cloistered hanging garden, beyond the women's rooms, their baths
chiselled out of naked rock. And the beastliness was off-set by the
beauty of inlay and carving and colour; by the splendour of bronze gates
and marble pillars, and slabs of carven granite that served as
balustrade to the terraced roof, where daylight still lingered and
azure-necked peacocks strutted, serenely immune.

Seated on a carven slab, they looked downward into the heart of
desolation; upward, at creeping battlements and a little temple of Shiva
printed sharply on the light-filled sky.

"Can't you _feel_ the ghosts of them all round you?" whispered Roy.

"No, thank God, I can't," said practical Lance, taking out a cigarette.
But a rustle of falling stones made him start--the merest fraction.
"Perhaps smoke'll keep 'em off--like mosquitoes!" he added hopefully.

But Roy paid no heed. He was looking down into the hollow shell of that
which had been Amber. Not a human sound anywhere; nor any stir of life,
but the soft ceaseless kuru-kooing doves, that nested and mated in those
dusky inner rooms, where Queens had mated with Kings.

"'Thou hast made of a city an heap, of a defenced city a ruin ...Their
houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there,
and satyrs shall dance there,'" he quoted softly; adding after a pause,
"Mother had a great weakness for old Isaiah. She used to say he and the
minor prophets knew all about Rajasthan. The owls of Amber are blue
pigeons. But I hope she's spared the satyrs."

"Globe-trotters!" suggested Lance.

"Or 'Piffers' devoid of reverence!" retorted Roy. "Hullo! Here come the
others."

Footsteps and voices in the quadrangle waked hollow echoes as when a
stone drops into a well. Presently they sounded on the stairs near by:
Flossie's rather boisterous laugh; Martin chaffing her in his husky
tones.

"Great sport! Let's rent it off H.H. and gather 'em all in from the
highways and hedges for a masked fancy ball!"

Roy stood up and squared his shoulders. "Satyrs dancing, with a
vengeance!" said he; but the gleam of Aruna's sari smote him silent. A
band seemed to tighten round his heart....

* * *