Birbal paused on Âtma's threshold listening to her deep voice backed by the burring hum of her spinning wheel, and as he listened he shivered. This thought of unending life aroused from death or ever the tired eyes were fast closed appalled him. Not for him such slight slumber!

Then he knocked. There was a sound of quick uprising from within, a swift echo of footsteps and then Âtma's voice at the door said with a breathlessness in it:

"What is't? Hast brought news--is all well?"

"Well or ill matters naught" he replied cavalierly. "Open! I come from the King."

But the phrase had lost its charm, "Go thy way, Chamberlain of Princes!" came the mocking answer. "Once bit, twice shy."

"Thou mistakest, sister" urged Birbal, who knowing Mirza IbrahÎm's reputation, had no difficulty in guessing the cause of Âtma Devi's refusal. "I am Maheshwar Rao, disciple by birth of thy dead father."

The reassurance was deft, and the door held ajar upon the chain showed Âtma's figure, tall, low-browed, defiant.

"What wants my lord?" she asked, and her voice trembled as if from some secret perturbation. "A kiss like my Lord IbrahÎm, ere I turned him out, close clipped in an embrace for which he cared not? Yet enter--in the King's name enter to the house of his ChÂran."

Something there was of strain, of anxiety, in face and manner, that made Birbal's keen eyes seek round the roof for its cause. Then he laughed. "Nay! I seek no kisses, widow, where a lover has just left his lips."

She stared at him haughtily. "What means my lord?"

He pointed easily to a pair of man's shoes which stood in a corner beside the door. "Smagdarite's, sister! Ah I have your secret. He is here, for yonder are his shoes!"

Âtma's eyes following his, grew puzzled in their anger.

"Shoes!" she echoed superbly. "I see them not, my lord."

This time the laugh came more coarsely. "None so blind as the blind beggar! Bah! woman, do I not know what woman is? He is here I say--hath been here always, and thou didst delude me last time with the child's voice."

He paused, for suddenly a tremulous sweet song as of some mating bird rose on the air.

Once again the man who doubted all things felt a thrill almost of fear; but Fate promptly gave him back his self-confidence, for a voice behind him said as the song ceased.

"If my lord seeks me, I seek my lord."

He turned to find the rebeck player on the threshold; but with bare feet. So the cynical laughter rang out this time in frank amusement. "Well designed, musician! But the shoes lie yonder." And then he hummed gaily the refrain of a popular song.

A flickering smile showed on the rebeck player's lips. "My lord has learnt that of lust in the bazaar. If he desires to learn of love he should go--to BayazÎd!"

The faintly inflected play of words was out of keeping with the man who made it; but the vague questionings concerning him which for days past had been in Birbal's mind seemed to have vanished with his first look at the miserable, almost squalid figure, the dull eyes, the deathlike mask of the face. What could the fellow be but street musician? Except--since women were incomprehensible--the widow's lover!

Something of curiosity, however, remained.

"BayazÎd?" he echoed haughtily. "What knowest thou of the drunkard who calls himself King of Malwa?"

"That he is King of Musicians, my lord, and this slave's master. He could tell my lord all concerning love. Aye! even as well as the Sufi from IsphahÂn."

Those dull eyes seemed to take on a leer and Birbal stared at them, startled back into questionings.

"The Sufi? What dost know of him?" he asked quickly.

"Naught!" replied the musician evasively. "Save that the servants said he sups at the river palace this night; he and another king--PayandÂr of Sinde mayhap."

He looked up again with that leer in his eyes, and the wonder died out of Birbal's. The man was palpably a trickster; palpably trying to play on credulity--credulity in Birbal, prince of doubters!

"Then will they sup in hell, slave," he said curtly "since PayandÂr hath been dead these fifteen years. So farewell, Smagdarite, lest I disturb love. Stay--let me see thy talisman once more."

"This dustborn atom in a beam of light resigns it," came the reply, and for an instant Birbal stood paralysed by dim remembrance. But the green stone on its greasy skein lay in his hands, all inert, without perfume, without, charm.

It was like nothing so much, he told himself, as half chewed cud, and he tossed it back contemptuously, a gold piece following it.

"That for thy pains. Farewell, widow! Luck to thy love!"

He turned to go, but the rebeck player who had stooped to pick up the coin, still stood in the doorway, and the sun flashing on the gold he held betwixt finger and thumb seemed for a second to blind Birbal's eyes to everything else.

"If the Most Excellent desires to hear of love," came the musician's voice softly, "he might go to the King BayazÎd's river palace--this night--when the moon is waning. The river palace, my lord, when the moon is waning."

The words echoed down the stairs after Birbal who seemed not to hear them. They had, however, the opposite effect on Âtma Devi; who all this time had stood silent, apparently engrossed in listening. Now she roused herself and turned accusingly to her companion.

"So thou has been here all the time, and it was to thee the child talked in gray dawn and gray dusk! Wherefore did I not see thee?"

"Because thou wouldst not, sister! Because thy mind has been elsewhere--whither God knows." She started and looked at him half-fearfully but he went on unregarding. "It is what the will wishes to see that is seen. To all else we are blind."

Something in the words seemed to strike a new note in her, and the half savage, half anxious look on her face vanished. "Yes! mayhap I have been blind," she muttered to herself despondently. "But wherefore--Oh ye dear Gods! wherefore am I blind!"

She turned to lean over the parapet, as if to rest her eyes, her very heart, upon the dim blue distant haze betwixt earth and sky.

"Because thou wilt not see the Truth, sister"--the voice seemed to her to belong to that dim earth and sky--"because thou hast denied love. Yet naught else will save the King."

She gave a startled cry but, looking round, saw that the Wayfarer had gone. "May Shiv-jee protect me" she murmured to herself. "He is magician for sure. Yet is he wrong. I am no woman, but the King's ChÂran, I have done my duty!" So, clenching her hands she sate and dreamed for him of safety, honour, empire.

Birbal, meanwhile, dreamt the same dream as he plunged into the increasing intricacy of cabal which centred round his master. So he gave no thought at all to so contemptible a person as the opium-drugged, song-besotted BayazÎd who still styled himself the King of Malwa, though he had fled from royalty for the sake of a dead dancing girl; as if any woman were worth such a sacrifice! True, the tragic tale of Rupmati, the poetess, musician, singer, ultimate artist, who had made her King forget even statesmanship for seven long happy years, had its Æsthetic beauty. One could picture the consternation of the dove-cot when Adham KhÂn, Akbar's general and foster-brother put the royal lover to flight; picture still more easily, knowing Adham KhÂn's nature, his defiance of orders, and the proposals he made to Rupmati. While the rest was pure poetry! The beautiful woman dressing herself as a bride is dressed for the conqueror's assignation, and then leaving nothing but dead flesh awaiting him on the couch strewn with flowers. That was fine! But BayazÎd? Even though Akbar's own hand had brought retribution on libertine Adham's head for this and other offences, he, Birbal, would never have come cringing to the Emperor's court, to spend his time in singing love ghazals. That was contemptible.

And yet as the day wore on, the memory of the rebeck player's words returned inconsequently, almost annoyingly. What was it to him, Birbal, if BayazÎd had a supper party or no? He had other corn to parch. And he parched it consistently until, late on in the evening, having excused himself, he knew not why, from an entertainment at the palace, he fell asleep peacefully.

The gongs were sounding eleven when he woke suddenly to a new resolve, which admitted of no reconsideration.

He would go to the river palace. After all, there might be something in what the rebeck player had said--he might be in the right. At any rate there was no harm in seeing. He clapped his hands and ordered his fast trotting bullocks. But the river palace lay some miles away in an orange garden down by the sliding yellow stream which flows past Agra and it was nigh on midnight ere he reached its wide open gateway. Bidding his rÂth await him outside, he passed inward. A sentry slept in the scented shadow of the archway, so he went on unchallenged into the scented garden where the faint shadows of the waning moonlight slept also across the broad paved walks, and on the conduits of running water that was hastening to slake the nightly thirst of the sun-wearied plots of pomegranate and orange trees on which the ripe fruit hung obscure. The dim clearness seemed to show the darkness; above all the utter darkness of the great pile of the palace.

No signs here of a supper party! The fact whetted his curiosity, and he went on, feeling himself the only live thing in a world of drugs and dreams.

In the hallway another drowsy servant showed, curled up half asleep upon the floor.

"Your master?" asked Birbal.

"Roofways," came the answer with a yawn.

The whole place seemed opium-soddened; there was a cloying savour of poppy and dead roses in the narrow turret stairs which led upward; so narrow that the stone wall on either side was polished by the elbows of the passers up and down.

The first floor was dark save for the fading moonlight seen through the open window archways, so he went up again, until the wide roof set amid the encircling shadowy trees through which the pale gleam of the river showed, lay beneath his feet.

And overhead were the stars beginning their watch of the night.

One seemed to have fallen from heaven to burn in a silver filagree shrine, in shape like a domed mausoleum, which was the only thing dimly visible in the darkness; that, and still more dimly the lute with broken strings which lay before it illumined by the twinkling light.

"BayazÎd!"

He stood and called; till from the night beyond the light came a chanting, drowsy, half coherent voice--

"True wisdom, Hafiz, prince of poets," murmured Birbal as he went forward and called again.

This time the answer came from near, "Yea! I am BayazÎd. Welcome friend!"

He was resting on cushions behind the shrine and the light from its little lamp showed him, long, lank, listless. But the wide eyes in which burnt the dull fires of the Dreamgiver, recognised the visitor, and the man who had been King of Malwa roused himself to give salutation with stately ceremonial courtesy, and motioned Birbal to a seat beside him. As the latter sank into the cushions they gave out a scent of roses, and swift memory--swiftest of all for perfumes--made him look round hastily; but the roof showed no sign of other living soul.

"It is good of my lord to come so far and so late," murmured BayazÎd. "In what can I help my Lord?" The words came drowsily. He seemed in danger of falling asleep once and for all.

"I came to see PayandÂr, King of Sinde," said Birbal sharply. If that did not rouse the besotted fool nothing else would. The result was, in its way, excellent. BayazÎd sate up instantly and laid his hand on Birbal's arm.

"What of PayandÂr?" he queried, his face working. "What of the Master of Love? Does he indeed live, as some folk say?"

"That BayazÎd should know, better than some folk," replied Birbal dryly, "since he was to have supped here to-night."

"To-night" echoed BayazÎd. "Nay, not to-night, or she would have told me. She knows the Secret now!"

Birbal laughed lightly. "As we shall all know it--or not know it some day! As PayandÂr knows it also, since he died in the desert."

A sudden bitter exaltation came to the half-seen haggardness of the face, the voice rang almost militantly.

"Aye! in the desert, driven thither as we dreamers of love are driven ever, by lust--man's lust! Lo! thou knowest of my own seven happy years--of my songstress who sang of love--of the viper who slew her and slew the King in me. OhÍ Rupmati, Rupmati! Were it not that thou comest to me ever in the song of birds, in the breeze of the night, in God's sunshine and in his flowers, I too would seek the desert and save myself from the deadly companionship of my kind. So I wait for thee and thy broken lute." He sank back into his cushions stilled by the very violence of his emotions; but after a while his voice went on more and more drowsily. "That the world knows. All know the tale of BayazÎd and Rupmati. But who knows the story of PayandÂr? Shall I tell it as she told it me? How he loved a Rose in a garden of roses; naught but a gardener's daughter--and he a Prince of the TarkhÂns. What do the TarkhÂns know of Love? But he knew. He loved her--aye! though he was Heir. So, vile utterly, his father betrayed him. A bastard younger brother did the deed one night in the Garden of Roses, and when dawn came the Rosebud had been plucked, despoiled! He left Kingship, and died mad in the desert--so they say! But Love cannot die. Even in the Wilderness there is a Rose Garden ready for it. So he took the Rosebud thither, plucked, despoiled, soiled, bruised, and broken. And out of Death came Life. Out of Lust came Love, though the child was a crippled thing, despoiled, spoiled, bruised, and broken by its birth. But Death came also to the Rosebud in the Rose Garden of Love, amidst the perfume of roses. Is it not even now in the air? Is not the darkness full of the Essence of Love. OhÍ, OhÍ Rupmati! let me hearken to thy broken lute."

Was it fancy, or mingled with the faint sighing of the night wind amongst many leaves, and the fainter rush of the sliding river was there a sound as of jangled music?

Birbal sate arrested for a second, then, seeing from the supineness of the figure beside him, that all hope of further speech with the drug-eater was over, rose impatiently and made his way downstairs, asking himself why he had come.

He paused astonished, however, to find the lower story no longer dark. It was, on the contrary, brilliantly lit, servants were flitting about, and in the central room, whose twelve arches gave on surrounding arched aisles, which in their turn gave on overshadowing trees and river gleam, a supper cloth was laid for two.

And by all the Gods! The figure which sate there holding a cup of wine in its raised right hand was the Sufi from IsphahÂn!