curtsies in the stair-head maze of mirrored lights has been trained
to imitate her. But Ranjoor Singh flipped the girl a coin, and it
jingled at her feet.

The maid ceased bowing, too insulted to retort. The piece of silver--
she would have stooped for gold, just as surely as she would have
recognized its ring--lay where it fell. Ranjoor Singh stepped forward
toward a glass-bead curtain through which a soft light shone, and an
unexpected low laugh greeted him. It was merry, mocking, musical--and
something more. There was wisdom hidden in it--masquerading as
frivolity; somewhere, too, there was villainy-villainy that she who
laughed knew all about and found more interesting than a play.

Then suddenly the curtain parted, and Yasmini blocked the way,
standing with arms spread wide to either door-post, smiling at him;
and Ranjoor Singh had to stop and stare whether it suited him or not.

Yasmini is not old, nor nearly old, for all that India is full of
tales about her, from the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. In a land where
twelve is a marriageable age, a woman need not live to thirty to be
talked about; and if she can dance as Yasmini does--though only the
Russian ballet can do that--she has the secret of perpetual youth to
help her defy the years. No doubt the soft light favored her, but she
might have been Ranjoor Singh's granddaughter as she barred his way
and looked him up and down impudently through languorous brown eyes.

"Salaam, O plowman!" she mocked. She was not actually still an
instant, for the light played incessantly on her gauzy silken
trousers and jeweled slippers, but she made no move to admit him. "My
honor grows! Twice--nay, three times in a little while!"