Part 15 (1/2)

”Do you like it?” she asked, suddenly pausing a pace or two from him to stand still, heaped round by those s.h.i.+mmer-crested billows, and so, with one hand, gather the straight folds of her veil to curves over her arm. As she did so, he saw, with a curious throb at his heart, that her wrists were fettered to each other by long trailing chains of scented jasmine flowers.

A dainty prisoning indeed! The suggestion of it set his head whirling.

Like it!--His very admiration kept him silent.

”It makes it feel more real,” she went on, ”don't you think it does?”

Real, or a dream? He did not know which. He felt a fool to stand so silent; yet no words--as she would phrase it--came to match. None, at least, that he dare use to her unconscious dignity.

”Only I can't dance, you see,” she continued, bending to look at the billows about her feet. ”Besides,”--she looked up suddenly, her whole expression changed, she flung her fettered hands forward almost into his face. The strings on strings of scented flowers looping themselves in ever widening curves, hung like a screen between him and her laughter.

”I'm a prisoner--yours, I suppose.” He fell back for half a second, then caught the hand in his.

And then, in an instant, it came back to him--the measureless glad content of that mistake in the dark! He had told himself ever since that it had come, then, by mistake--incomprehensible, it is true, horrible to a certain extent, but still in error. But this was no mistake!

”Yes!--my prisoner,” he said. ”Come, and sit down, and let us talk.” He wanted time to think.

She shook her head. ”Not here, please! No one is to see me but you, only you. That is why I waited till I saw you were alone. I only put it on for you to see.”

A sudden remembrance of something she had said to him--”When it is real, and you give yourself--everything, and ask nothing.” The certainty that she was doing this now made him say quickly:--

”Don't be afraid--they shall not see. Come, let us go into the garden--those balconies by the river--”

She shook her head again.

”They are not safe, and my guardian would be so angry. Though it isn't really wrong”--she added, with her odd vein of piety; ”but when somebody sent me the dress, I thought it would be fun, and I wanted you to see.”

”Sent you the dress?” he echoed hotly. ”Who?”

She looked at him vastly amused. ”Are you jealous? But I'm not going to tell you. That is just like the novels, isn't it; but what is the use of making people angry?”

”How do you know I should be angry,” he asked coldly.

She smiled like a Sphinx might smile. ”I'm certain. Come! Perhaps I'll tell you when we get to a safe place. There's one close by. My guardian wouldn't have it lit up because--he always has the same reason for everything, you know, and it _is_ so dull--because something happened there long ago. As if it mattered!”

As she spoke, they had been pa.s.sing down the marble steps, her silver anklets chiming; and now, as they paused an instant on the edge of the water-maze, they chimed still. But to a new, curiously provocative measure, and her face, her figure, her very voice, changed as if to keep time with it.

”I used to run all over it, in and out, when I was little,” she chattered mischievously, ”and old Akbar used to run after me and tumble in! I could do it now, and you could chase me, if I hadn't all this-” she gave a little mutinous kick at her sweeping skirt. Then suddenly she laughed. ”Poor old Akbar! I'd like him to see me, but I don't see how it could be managed. And n.o.body else must--but you. So come--come quick!”

She drew him after her by one hand, like a child at play. Across the marble plinth, right to the wide arched pa.s.sage in the lower storey; and when, having gained in the race, he would from habit have gone straight on towards the courtyard, she pulled him back with a peal of laughter.

”Not that way, stupid! Here--it's a dear little balcony all by itself with steps down to the river and a boat.”

”Perfect!” he exclaimed with an answering laugh, as he disappeared after her.

But in that instant's pause two figures had pa.s.sed into the other end of the long pa.s.sage from the chapel. Two figures, one of which, half-disdainfully, half-regretfully, had been going round the beauties of the palace; the other, gambolling sideways by reason of its curbing deference its urging servility, engaged in garrulous tales of past glory.

”Yea! _Ger-eeb-pun-waz_,” it was saying, ”Bun-avatar used to meet Anari Begum here. She liked him best in uniform, and she wore--”