her thoughts far away in the desert, and his full of vain longings and
regrets, a man's low voice rose in the stillness of the night. "_Pale
hands I loved beside the Shalimar. Where are you now? Who lies beneath
your spell_?" he sang in a passionate, vibrating baritone. He was
singing in English, and yet the almost indefinite slurring from note to
note was strangely un-English. Diana Mayo leaned forward, her head
raised, listening intently, with shining eyes. The voice seemed to come
from the dark shadows at the end of the garden, or it might have been
further away out in the road beyond the cactus hedge. The singer sang
slowly, his voice lingering caressingly on the words; the last verse
dying away softly and clearly, almost imperceptibly fading into
silence.

For a moment there was utter stillness, then Diana lay back with a
little sigh. "The Kashmiri Song. It makes me think of India. I heard a
man sing it in Kashmere last year, but not like that. What a wonderful
voice! I wonder who it is?"

Arbuthnot looked at her curiously, surprised at the sudden ring of
interest in her tone, and the sudden animation of her face.

"You say you have no emotion in your nature, and yet that unknown man's
singing has stirred you deeply. How do you reconcile the two?" he
asked, almost angrily.

"Is an appreciation of the beautiful emotion?" she challenged, with
uplifted eyes. "Surely not. Music, art, nature, everything beautiful
appeals to me. But there is nothing emotional in that. It is only that
I prefer beautiful things to ugly ones. For that reason even pretty
clothes appeal to me," she added, laughing.