I have seen a man take eighteen yards of muslin and throw it
round his head with a few turns, and in five or six minutes the
beautiful folds were all in order and he looked like a king. Some
of the Gujars here wear black ones and they are very effective
and worth painting - the black folds and the sullen tempestuous
black brows underneath."

We sat in the pavilion for awhile looking down on the rushing
water, and she spoke of Akbar, the greatest of the Moguls, and
spoke with a curious personal touch, as I thought.

"I wish you would try to write a story of him - one on more human
lines than has been done yet. No one has accounted for the
passionate quest of truth that was the real secret of his life.
Strange in an Oriental despot if you think of it! It really can
only be understood from the Buddhist belief, which curiously
seems to have been the only one he neglected, that a mysterious
Karma influenced all his thoughts. If I tell you as a key-note
for your story, that in a past life he had been a Buddhist priest
- one who had fallen away, would that in any way account to you
for attempts to recover the lost way? Try to think that out, and
to write the story, not as a Western mind sees it, but pure
East."

"That would be a great book to write if one could catch the
voices of the past. But how to do it?"

"I will give you one day a little book that may help you. The
other story I wish you would write is the story of a Dancer of
Peshawar. There is a connection between the two - a story of ruin