He paced the length of the long room twice, turning quickly at each
end, but detecting no movement and no eyes. Then he sat down again
beside Warrington; but the feeling still persisted.

Suddenly a low laugh startled them, a delicious laugh, full of
camaraderie, that would have disarmed the suspicion of a wolf. Just
as unexpectedly a curtain less than a yard away from Kirby moved, and
she stood before them--Yasmini. She could only be Yasmini. Besides,
she had jasmine flowers worked into her hair.

Like a pair of bull buffaloes startled from their sleep, the colonel
and his adjutant shot to their feet and faced her, and to their
credit let it be recorded that they dropped their eyes, both of them.
They felt like bounders. They hated themselves for breaking in on
such loveliness.

"Will the sahibs not be seated again?" she asked them in a velvet
voice; and, sweating in the neck, they each sat down.

Now that the first feeling of impropriety had given way to
curiosity, neither had eyes for anything but her. Neither had ever
seen anything so beautiful, so fascinating, so impudently lovely. She
was laughing at them; each knew it, yet neither felt resentful.

"Well?" she asked in Hindustani, and arched her eyebrows questioning.

And Colonel Kirby stammered because she had made him think of his
mother, and the tender prelude to a curtain lecture. Yet this woman
was not old enough to have been his wife!