"Is it thou, SiyÂla?"

Âtma holding the cresset high peered out into the darkness of the stair.

A tinkle of soft laughter came from the shadows. "So! thou hast not forgotten the old signal, Âto! yet it was years agone that I gave thee the bracelet, and thou gavest me thine. Still have I come for the sake of it! That is enough, Yasmeen! I stay here till an hour ere dawn; then fetch me."

The last was called in a low voice down the darkness and thereinafter followed the sound of retreating steps; yet still no figure showed in the circle of cresset light.

"Wilt not come in SiyÂl?" said Âtma impatiently, "if by chance someone came and found us women----"

Another tinkle of laughter rose from the shadows and out of them stepped swaggering a slender youth, the very print and spit of fashion, made taller by a high-wound turban, his hand on the jewelled scimitar stuck in his tight-wound girdle.

"They would say that Âtma Devi had found a proper lover," laughed the masquerader. "La! Âtma, on my soul I do love thee!--thou art so monstrous serious, and thy large eyes have a fire in them. Be mine, sweet widow!"

"Peace, SiyÂl! This is not time for jesting. Come in and let me shut the door. I have matters of privacy to say."

"Say on," retorted the other gaily, "but not here. And call me not SiyÂl! I am thy true lover Sher-KhÂn. In truth, Âtma," here the voice changed to seriousness, "this disguise was necessary, seeing where I bide! In God's truth we bazaar women have to go for trickery to the chaste zenÂnas. I had but to tell Yasmeen I wished to go out and this"--she touched her costume--"was forthcoming instanter. Lo! I shall doubt every likely lad I see for the future as myself disguised!--who knows, indeed, but what I was born to be a man! Come sweetheart, I cannot talk here! Come with thy Sher-KhÂn."

She stepped forward and laid her hand on Âtma's wrist.

"Whither?" asked the latter, feeling as she looked at the feminine face set in masculine clothes the nameless charm of the woman in the man, the man in the woman. "And wherefore?"

The answer came short and sharp. "Because if I am missed they will seek me here first. Mihr-un-nissa knows, and she--she has no mercy when she feels power! We will go to my paradise. I have the key still. Lord! How I shall love it after this past fortnight of a virtuous cage! Lo! the dew of heaven is not a satisfying drink! So"--she snatched at the cresset, "follow me, sister--sweetheart--widow if thou wilt--woman any way! Bah! how dark it is--truly they say 'the torchbearer sees not his own steps.'"

Thus chattering in shrill whispers, she led the way. A key rattled in a lock; there were more stairs, then another door opened and they stood in Siyah Yamin's paradise.

A deserted paradise indeed! Dark, almost dreadful in its unseenness, with only a rustle as of dead, dried flowers and leaves coming to them with the faint breeze which blew in their faces from the darkness. A faint scent, as of withered blossoms came with it.

Siyah Yamin closed the door with a bang, burst into a perfect cascade of laughter, and then, out of sheer delight and devilry pirouetted and postured down the central walk singing as she danced a ghazal from HÂfiz:

With the cresset in her hand, its lights and shades falling on the high turban with its waving green ends, on the effeminate embroideries of her dandified dress, and bringing out into filmy clouds the long floating coatee of gold-spangled white muslin worn as a loose overall, she seemed like the very Spirit of Sex, neither male nor female, careless of everything save reckless sensual pleasure.

So, suddenly, the lithe body stooped and from the cresset in her hand one of the many little oil lamplets edging the paths and encircling what had been flower beds ere neglect and noonday suns had left them shrivelled, flickered into flame; then another, and another, and another, as swaying, posturing, singing she danced on into the shadows leaving behind her a pathway as of stars.

Ere she reached the pavilion at the further end and sank breathless amongst its silken cushions, a dim radiance was suffused over the roof showing the withered roses, the trailing dead tendrils of the scented jasmine, the litter of spent blossoms, all the lees and dregs of a past pleasure. The very table, low to the ground, its mother-o'-pearl inlaying all dust-covered, still held a half emptied wine cup or two, a leaf plate of half-rotten fruit.

"Lo! SiyÂla!" said Âtma, suddenly looking almost tenderly at her companion, as she lay, bathed in the rosy light of the hanging lamp she had lit, "what art thou in very truth? Sometimes thou seemest to me of the stars; at times thou art very earth."

The courtesan laughed. "I am Woman," she replied, flinging her high turban aside and drawing the loose fallen tresses of her hair through her fingers lazily, settling them in dainty fashion on her shoulders, "I wait as I have waited all the long ages for the Man! Lo! I am ready for his desire. I am the uttermost Nothingness which tempts Form. I am MÂya, illusion and delusion!"

Her voice full of music and charm fell on the ear drowsily.

"And thou, Âtma," she went on, "shall I tell thee what thou art? Thou art that which seeks not--which gives and takes nothing in return. Thou art salvation. Yet thou canst not save--the Woman is too strong for thee. Thou lovest the King!"

The blood flew to Âtma's face. "Thou liest!" she cried hotly.

Siyah Yamin's laugh filled the emptiness of the roof. "Thy denial proves it, sister! Were it not wiser to accept thy womanhood? OhÉ! Âtma! there is joy in drawing the strength of a man through his lips!--in making him forget high thoughts--in dragging him down, down to the very depths of--of Nothingness!"

Her small bejewelled hand closed on the empty air; yet Âtma shivered: that emptiness seemed to hold so much. She sate down on the steps and resting her chin on her hand remained crouched in on herself, silent, looking out over the dead roses.

"Lo! here is wine!" came the gay voice. "Pledge me in it, Âtma! Does not HÂfiz say 'the cloister and the wine shop are not far apart?' No more is thy woman's love from my woman's love. Why shouldst thou try to make it man's love?"

The trivial song ceased. SiyÂla slipping from her cushions had slidden toward Âtma, and now, her chin resting on the latter's broad shoulder, was looking up at the brave steady face with cajoling menace in her eyes.

"Why, and what willst thou, Âto? There is no third way. Woman must be as I--the eternal Nothingness which Something sought in the beginning; sought, tempted by the desire for Form; which men seek now tempted by the Woman Form they have made! Tempted by me, the courtesan, who drains the good from them and flings it sterile on the dust heap of the world! Or they must be as thou art not: instinct with Motherhood, draining the soul of man to hand it on in ceaseless conflict of sex, of Form and Matter through the ages. But thou, Âto? Thou wouldst be neither! Thou art mother of the past, not of the future. Thou wouldst stand aside and give the man part of thee--'tis in all women even in Siyah Yamin--thou wouldst give this man part which has come to thee through thy fathers, back all untouched by thy womanhood to the man thou lovest! Fool! There is no such love for us womenkind!"

"There thou tellest truth, SiyÂl," said Âtma coldly. "It is not love. Did I not tell thee so? But I came not here for this. We must speak and speak quickly."

So the two women, half seen in the suffused light of the empty roof, sate talking while the little lamplets twinkled like stars, and every here and there one, growing short of oil, flickered and went out leaving a gap of darkness.

"Three!" counted the courtesan with a yawn as the mellow echoing notes of the city gongs chimed through the night. "'Tis time I were gone!"

She caught up her turban, coiled her long hair beneath it, thus stood transformed at once into effeminate manhood. "And Sher-KhÂn," she continued swaggering, "hath not had even one kiss--sweet widow!--the perfume of thy hair is wrapped round my living soul----"

"Peace, SiyÂl," said Âtma, who risen, stood sombre, thoughtful. "Then I can do no more. I have warned thee. If thou swearest, I will speak."

"And I will deny--what then?"

"Then is my death----"

Siyah Yamin burst into a peal of laughter.

"Death! Trust the men folk--aye!--Trust the King to put a spoke in that wheel! A woman is a woman, and thou art too good looking! Lord! I shall laugh to see it, and thou so serious. Come! let us drink to our success before we go."

She seized an empty wine cup, then stood looking at it for a second, checked by the sight of it. It was a blown glass goblet damascened with gold. She held it to the light, her small child's face grown suddenly soft. "The cup of pleasure," she murmured to herself. "How long is it since he gave it!" So, with a laugh, she filled it to the brim from a flagon that stood near.

"Thy health, Âto, and thy lover's!" she cried lightly. "Lo! he who gave the cup was mine once; but Siyah Yamin will never lack for men, since she is woman!"

She raised the cup to her lips but did not touch it, then, with a sudden gesture flung it far into the shadows. It fell with a crash beside a withered rose bush, and the red wine trickled through the dry earth to moisten the roots below.

"Come, Âtma." she continued. "Nay! leave the lights as they are. They will outlast the stars anyhow!"

A minute later Siyah Yamin's paradise held nothing but the twinkling lights flickering out one by one. Yet she was right. The rising sun found some of them burning bravely and the rose-shaded lamp in the pavilion shone persistently on the silken cushions as if seeking for some one; perhaps for her.

* * * * *

The palace was early astir that morning, and little knots of men waited gossiping in corridor and vestibule.

"It is not politic," sighed Abulfazl, "the common folk well ask who is God's vice-regent on earth if a King's order is no order."

'"Tis the devil's own foolery," spoke up Birbal roughly, bitterly, "the long beards wag loosely already, and if Akbar gives them a field they will take a barn."

And in truth a certain ill-defined smirk sate on the concealed lips of the learned doctors of the law who stood in a bevy near the door. To them even consideration of the vexed question was a distinct score. It was a confession that the usurper of their office did not know his business.

To the general public assembling in force it was an occasion for curiosity; for something new which might pave the way to almost anything. Only the Syeds, their hawk faces clustering close together, their hands clutching at their sword belts, seemed certain of the future.

A burst of the royal kettledrums in the distance echoed finally over a dense crowd, packing the wide arches of the huge Hall-of-Audience, and stretching beyond them into the paved courtyard.

"If he wear the Luck still, it will be something to go by," muttered a weak-looking courtier, who by his very dress--curiously nondescript--his shaven chin and high green turban showed a desire to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.

There were many such in Akbar's empire; men whose imaginations went so far with the King, yet whose hearts failed them before the strangeness of his dreams.

Another long, loud burst of wild music, and the King showed alone on the high raised dais, canopied and latticed at the sides with fretted marble, which opened at the back into the private passage reserved for Royal use only. By reason of the limited space in which he stood--the central archway rising but a few inches above his head--he looked larger, taller, broader than his wont, and as he glanced keenly over the packed multitude before him, he showed every inch a king. Yet he was conscious that he, alone of all his empire, saw strength, not weakness, in his readiness for reconsideration; that he, only, felt that the revocation of his order would be a greater display of kingly power than the original order itself.

Standing as he did in shadow, it took the crowd a silent second or two before it realised--what to it was a stupendous fact--that in this critical new departure of their King's he was prepared to defy Fate. He had deserted his luck. The tight wound turban of royalty did not show the dull glow of the great diamond.

A sort of shiver ran through the Hall, checked by the King's voice.

"Are the suitors and the witnesses in the case present?" he asked.

Abulfazl, stepping into the wide open square kept clear before the railed dais, replied in the affirmative.

"Then proceed."

The sing-song voice of the court reader filled the hushed air, but from outside, beyond the red-toothed arches, came the morning song of many birds. The sunlight filtered in with the song, making Akbar's attention wander. How trivial these petty questions of rights and wrongs seemed beside the great questions of Life in itself.

"Bring forward the woman. Let her swear that she is true and lawful wife."

The crowd swayed at the back. A domed red dhooli showed forcing its way to the front.

"Room! Room!" cried the ushers. "Room! Room! for the virtuous."

If it was virtuous, there was still something in the very fall of the swinging silk curtains, in the lift of the liveried bearers, which set men's pulses a-bounding. For it was Siyah Yamin's dhooli and she was inside. Would she unveil? Would they see her again, uttermost mistress of art, absolute owner of guile? A faint sigh of disappointment seemed to shudder through the crowd as, in obedience to order, the bearers set down the dhooli and removed the red domed cover, thus disclosing a muffled figure which rose and salaamed low toward Akbar. Something there was of ultimate grace in the salutation, which made remembrance still more clear, and sent a pang of resentment through many of those present that this perfection should no longer be public property. A cupola of chastity indeed! screened and guarded by veiled duennas! Not one in faith, but two! It was preposterous!--Siyah Yamin! the darling of the town!

"Woman!" came Akbar's voice, "wilt thou swear that thou art lawfully wedded to the exiled JamÂl-ud-din, Syed of BÂrha?"

There was an instant's pause, then a gay clear voice with a bubble of laughter in it replied:

"Yea! I swear! even though Âtma---- Where art thou, sister? Disguised as yon duenna, I'll go bail!"

At her first word there was a faint scuffle, a flinging aside of a burka, a silver flash, and almost ere she ended the ChÂran's cry rang out

It is a lie
I, Âtma, I
Give it the lie
Ye Bright Ones see me die
Avenge the lie!