did. So he was relieved to find the ball room, and the wide loggia into

which it opened, almost empty. Only a couple or two were spinning slowly, idly, in and out of the resounding arches.

He went on, therefore, to the balcony beside the stairs. If the girl was there it would be an excuse for sitting out. If not, he could always say he had waited for her. Either way, he would have time for a cigarette.

As he went down towards it he met Lance Carlyon coming up, and called to him: "Supper's A1; so's the wine. It's going awfully well, isn't it?"

"Suppose so," replied Lance, "but I'm going to cut. These togs are awful; but if I go now I'll have time to change and have a shoot down the river. Am-ma says the ducks sit like stones before dawn. They won't miss me, as a bachelor, I suppose?"

Vincent looked at him compassionately. "A bachelor," he echoed. "It's about your last chance, I take it. However, if you want to kill something--it's a common symptom--go! I shall stop till the bitter--or sweet--end! One doesn't get into a streak like this once in a blue moon! I feel fit for anything."

As he sat down for a smoke in the corner vacated by Robinson Crusoe, this feeling was strong upon him, and sent the blood tingling to his finger-tips.

The band had by this time ceased piping to unwilling dancers, so the still, warm, scented air was left to the tinkling ripple of the water, the rippling tinkle of distant voices; for supper had almost emptied the garden also. The better for its picturesque effect. Now the imagination could people it--as Laila Bonaventura (the girl had sense) had phrased it--with figures that matched; real figures.

A chiming silvery clash above him made him turn to look upwards to the archway where Laila Bonaventura had disappeared. It would be a bore if she were returning to interrupt his cigarette; though, in truth, she had been, he remembered, almost attractive.

Almost--

He gave an exclamation, and rose to his feet. She was coming, indeed, but not as she had gone.

There is no dress in the world which is at once so dainty and so sensuous, as the court dress of a Mahomedan lady, and Laila Bonaventura was wearing one as she came slowly down the stairs towards him, a radiant white figure against the radiant white marble.

The folds of her long silver-gauze skirt--so cunningly fashioned that it trailed in rolling shimmer-crested billows behind her, yet left no beauty of her round limbs hidden--clipped her about the waist like a serpent's skin. So hiding, yet revealing, was the soft film of fine muslin over the scented, ivory-tinted corselet, which fitted close to the full curves of her figure. So was it with the silver-streaked veil, through which the jewels in her dusky hair, the bracelets on her fair arms, shone undimmed. So was it even with the chiming fringes of her silver anklets, as they slid merrily to cover and uncover the small feet, tucked so carelessly into the little silver-tipped slippers.

To hide and to reveal, that was the note of all!

As she came nearer, too, he saw that her lips were reddened, her dark eyes darkened artificially. And yet her face did not correspond to all this. It was curiously grave, dignified, almost anxious.

"Do you like it?" she asked, suddenly pausing a pace or two from him to stand still, heaped round by those shimmer-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 passing 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 nobody 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 passage 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 passed into the other end of the long passage 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-wâz_," it was saying, "Bun-avatâr used to meet Anâri Begum here. She liked him best in uniform, and she wore--"

It was then that, framed in the distant archway, seen clear against the radiance of the garden, that vision of a laughing girl, a flashing uniform appeared.

Old Akbar Khân gave a faint mumbling petition to be preserved, and fell back, his teeth chattering.

"Anâr--Anâr--herself," he muttered. "And he--God help us all! Why did they light up the garden?"

But Roshan Khân knew better. His eyes were younger. And he had the key--the key of that shimmering silver dress.

"Fool!" he said sharply. "They are no ghosts. 'Twas Dering-_sahib_ and--and--" he gave a bitter laugh--"one of his _mems_. They do such things often."

But as he walked on, his hands clenched themselves to the tune of the words which sang in his brain, "God smite his soul to hell! God smite his soul to hell!"

The two great stabilities, Love of God and Love of woman, had joined hands, as they always do.

A formidable combination.