Then Yasmini caught a new sound on the stairs, and swiftly,
instantly, instead of glancing to the entrance, her eyes sought
Ranjoor Singh's; and she saw that he had heard it too. So she sat up
as if enlightenment had come and had brought disillusion in its wake.

The glass-bead curtain jingled, and a maid backed through it
giggling, followed in a hurry by a European, dressed in a white duck
apology for evening clothes. He seemed a little the worse for drink,
but not too drunk to recognize the real Yasmini when he saw her and
to blush crimson for having acted like an idiot.

"Queen of the Night!" he said in Hindustani that was peculiarly
mispronounced.

"_Box-wallah!_" she answered under her breath; but she smiled
at him, and aloud she said, "Will the sahib honor us all by being
seated?"

A maid took charge of the man at once, and led him to a seat not far
from the middle of the room. Yasmini, whose eyes were on Ranjoor
Singh every other second, noticed that the Sikh, having summed up the
European, had already lost all interest.

But there, were other footsteps. The curtain parted again to admit a
second European, a somewhat older man, who glanced back over his
shoulder deferentially and, to Yasmini's unerring eye, tried to carry
off prudish timidity with an air of knowingness.

"Who is he?" demanded Ranjoor Singh; and Yasmini rattled the
bracelets on her ankles loud enough to hide a whisper.