And the chink of steel on rock explained
That footfall in the night?

Have you seen a gray boar sniff up-wind
In the mauve of waking day?

Have you heard a mad crowd pause and think?
Have you seen all Hell to pay?




CHAPTER II


Yasmini bears a reputation that includes her gift for dancing and
her skill in song, but is not bounded thereby, Her stairs illustrated
it--the two flights of steep winding stairs that lead to her
bewildering reception-floor; they seem to have been designed to take
men's breath away, and to deliver them at the top defenseless.

But Risaldar-Major Ranjoor Singh mounted them with scarcely an
effort, as a man who could master Bagh well might, and at the top his
middle-aged back was straight and his eye clear. The cunning,
curtained lights did not distract him; so he did not make the usual
mistake of thinking that the Loveliness who met him was Yasmini.

Yasmini likes to make her first impression of the evening on a man
just as he comes from making an idiot of himself; so the maid who