ou want me to make with you, Princess?" King
answered.

"I can make you ruler of all India!" she said. "Another may wear the
baubles, but thou shalt be the true king, even as thy name is! And
behind thee, me, Yasmini, whispering wisdom and laughing to see the
politicians strut!"

King leaned back and laughed at her.

"Do you really expect me to help you ruin my own countrymen, go back on
my color, creed, education, oath and everything, and----"

"Deluded fools! The East--the East, Athelstan, is waking! Better make
terms with me, and thou shalt live to ride on the arising East as God
rides on the wind and bits and governs it!"

"Very well," he said. "Show me. I'll do nothing blindfold."

"Hah! Thou art not half-conquered yet," she laughed. "And what of
Ganesha? Is this mountain of bones and thews a person to be trusted, or
shall we show him how much stronger than him is a horsehair in a clever
woman's fingers?"

"This man Ramsden is my friend," King said.

"Are you _his_ friend?" she retorted.

He nodded.

"You are going to see the naked heart of India!" she said. "Better to
have your eyes burned out now than see that and be false to it
afterward!"

Then, since we failed to order red-hot needles for our eyes, she cried
out once--one clear note that sounded almost exactly as if she had
struck a silver gong. A woman entered like the living echo to it.
Yasmini spoke, and the woman disappeared again.

Below us the river swallowed and gurgled along the palace wall, and we
caught the occasional thumping of a boat-pole. The thumping ceased
exactly underneath us, and a man began singing in the time-hallowed
language of Rajasthan. I think he was looking upward as he sang, for
each word reached its goal.

"Oh warm and broad the plow land lies,
The idle oxen wait!
We pray thee, holy river, rise,
Nor glut thy fields too late!
The year awakes! The slumbering seed
Swells to its birth! Oh river, heed!"

"Strange time of year for that song, Princess! Is that one of your
spies?" asked King, not too politely.

"One of my friends," she answered. "I told you: India awakes! But
watch."

It was growing dark. Two women came and drew the curtains closer. Other
women brought lamps and set them on stools along one wall; others again
brought tapers and lit the candles in the hydra-headed candelabra.

"It is really too light yet," Yasmini grumbled, as if the gods who
marshal in the night had not kep