"I would have sent for thee," said Âtma softly, "but there was none to send. The whole town was away at the festival--so I stayed." She sighed almost fiercely in her regret at having been let and hindered, though her eyes were tender, as she gazed down on little ZarÎfa who lay in the Wayfarer's arms. It was bare dawn, and, in the shadow of the wall one could but just see the perfect outline of the sleeping face that nestled close to his pallid mask.

"She fails fast, methinks," added the woman in a lower tone.

"Aye! she fails--at last," echoed the man's voice. As if to give them both the lie, the whispered words brought a sudden smile to ZarÎfa's face. Her eyes opened full of swift desire, her whole deformed body pressed closer to the breast on which it lay, and there was unmistakable appeal in the soft curved cheeks, the curved waiting lips. The Wayfarer answered it instantly and laid his to hers.

The kiss was long; his mask came up from it with a certain repulsion of expression, at once tender and cruel.

"Yea, it is true! She nears womanhood, and what hath she to do with its blessing, or with its curse," he muttered, looking at the face, which, satisfied, had sunk to sleep once more, a smile still hovering over it; then he laid the misshapen bundle of humanity he held--so small, so helpless, so apart from everything save limited life--on the string bed, whence he had taken it, and covered it gently with the quilt; for the air of dawn was chill.

Âtma stood looking down on the beautiful face, feeling a hot anger rise in her heart against all mankind.

"Thou didst never love her mother, or thou wouldst not speak so," she said scornfully.

The Wayfarer, who at the parapet was watching the slow growth of dawn, turned on her swiftly. "Not love her, woman?" he echoed passionately, fiercely. "That God knows! It is her father that I hate--it is for him I wait!"

"Her father? Art thou not then----?" began the ChÂran in surprise, but the rebeck player had recovered his calm monotony of manner.

"Her father truly," he said, "since of Love I brought her into the world, of Love I care for her, of Love I give her Love."

As he spoke his fingers were busy about his neck, and Âtma seeing him stoop over the sleeper, saw also that he left something in the ghostly half-seen folds of the white quilt.

"What is't?" she asked curiously, stooping also, conscious of a certain unreality in what had passed, in what was passing. She had sate up all night beside ZarÎfa, unable to leave her, unable to get a message sent to summon any one; and so, unable to hear what was happening, when so much might happen.

The nervous tension of that night of waiting, of watching had been great; yet she had forgotten it when in the false dawn the Wayfarer had suddenly appeared. Since then she had been absorbed, as he was, in the child--this child of Love!

Ye Gods! What was it that exhaled roses? The whole air was full of their scent--her very eyes seemed to see them, crowning the sleeping head, hiding the scant contour of the deformed body: and to her, ignorant in a way, yet from her birth familiar with mystical thoughts, credulous of all mystical things, the sudden inrush of unreality brought small surprise but quick curiosity, and she caught imperatively at the Wayfarer's hand.

"Who art thou, Lord!" she asked simply. "In the name of this Rose of Love tell this slave."

The man drew back from her touch resentfully; his face grew more human, less deathlike, and Âtma watching it wondered at the change in it, and asked herself, if this were indeed the poor musician who played for the chance hearers of the bazaars.

"Thou hast spoken a compelling word, sister," he said, "so thou shalt be told. But guard the secret if thou lovest--any! I am PayandÂr--whether king or hind matters little. Mayhap I am both, since I am Love incarnate and Hate incarnate. That is Spiritual Love which knows not Sex, and Earthly Love which lives by it. And I--doubtless thou hast heard the tale, told as a legend--I loved one who was to be my wife. But she whom I held sacred, my brother, of wanton wickedness, dishonoured. Yonder child is his--so the Earthly Love that is in me still, despite the Rose Garden of the wilderness, waits till the measure of his iniquity shall be full. It will not be long."

He stretched his hand out menacingly, and turned to go.

"Thy brother?" she echoed, "who----"

He stopped her with a sudden wild gesture.

"Ask not that, fool!" he cried passionately. "Lo! thou art very woman, cleaving to the detail, seeing naught of the spirit. Thou canst not even see that I have lied? I tell thee she is my child--the child of the sins which I, TarkhÂn, inherited even as he did--the child of many sins that are in me, even as they are in him."

He stooped over the sleeper and kissed her on the forehead.

"Master!" said Âtma tremulously as she saw him cross to the door. "Must thou go? I have waited long--and now----"

"There comes one who will bring thee news, and I will be back ere long," he answered, and even as he spoke a voice full of importance, breathless with hurry, came from the stairs.

"Mistress Âtma! Mistress, I say. God send she be not out, or, if mischief come of it, I will be double damned for double treason."

The next instant old Deena the drumbanger, his drum hitched to his back like a huge hump, hustled the departing musician at the door and flung himself blubbering at Âtma's feet.

"Lo! chaste pillar of virtue! said I not ever ill service was as the feeding of snakes--one never knows but when one has to turn on them rather than that they should turn on thee," he began tumultuously, "but I have come! Yea! old Deena hath to remember his soul and if mistress Siyah Yamin----"

"Siyah Yamin! What of her," queried Âtma sharply even as she added, "Speak, lower, fool! Thou wilt disturb the child."

Deena made a grimace of apology, pursed his face up, looked at the sleeper, shook his head with elaborate regret, and then hitching his drum round to equalise his balance, squatted with his elbows resting on it, ready for a calm whispered recital of what he had come prepared to tell.

"There is no need to begin at the beginning," he said tentatively and was rewarded by Âtma's curt "Tell all, slave! I have been held here by the child all night and know nothing."

"Thank God for ignorance!" ejaculated the old gossip piously, and went on to recount the events of the past night.

Âtma listened quietly. She started and clasped her hands tighter when she heard how the King and Prince SalÎm had exchanged turbans, but her long night's vigil had brought so many visions of what Birbal's wit might compass that she scarcely felt surprised. The story of the bursting of the reservoir and, the miraculous escape of the father and son, however, told as it was from the outside (for old Deena naturally knew nothing of the extraordinary import of the incident he was describing) roused her instant alarm.

"Prate not about their bareheadedness!" she broke in on his tale of how the two had stood before the multitude shorn of honourable headgear but mighty in monarchy--"the turbans man! the turbans! what of them?"

Deena's wicked old eyes lost their sparkle, his tone grew peevish. "Lo! mistress! wouldst spoil the picture. Doubtless they drowned. Who thinks of turbans when----"

Âtma was on her feet. "Bide thou here! I must go," she said hurriedly. She felt she could no longer stand inaction. All this had came about--if, indeed, it had come about "Yea! I must go to Siyah Yamin," she repeated blindly.

Old Deena laid a detaining hand on her red skirt. "Not there! mistress! Not there. Lo! thou hast not heard what I come to tell. Thou didst bid me begin at the beginning and I began; but 'tis not only scorpions' tails that end in a sting, and this one hath venom in it I swear. If thou hadst heard--Nay listen! mistress! 'Twas Meean KhodadÂd and Mirza IbrahÎm who came raging to Siyah Yamin's half an hour agone. I had gone back thither after the show was over to have speech with Yasmeen and the hussy was virtuous and would not let me in. So, standing there I heard----"

"What?" asked Âtma fiercely, "Canst not speak without twists and turns?"

"Lo! Mistress! let my tongue follow my brain as the potter's donkey follows muddy breeches thinking them his master," replied Deena mildly. "I am at the very prick o' the point. They swore vengeance on thee for what I know not, protesting that thou and thou only couldst be the cause; and then they swore at Siyah Yamin for telling thee; but gingerly, for look you SiyÂla is not one to threaten lightly--but she said--doubtless with that smile which makes a body feel like a camel without legs----"

"What said she, fool?" interrupted Âtma exasperated.

"That without the seeing of thee she could not tell; whereupon they said that if they saw thee----"

Âtma caught up a white cloth and wrapped it round her. "Stay thou here!" she said imperatively, "the child sleeps and I will be back in half an hour."

She was well down the stairs ere Deena ceased to call feebly! "Not so! oh mistress most chaste, not so!" and resigning himself to circumstances closed the door, hasping it lightly by the bottom hook and chain, then sate down beside the sleeping child.

"Even as a Peri," he murmured to himself as he looked at the face showing more clearly now in the coming light. "Truly God knows His own work--yet is there no mortal sense in sending such a countenance of beauty with no body to match it fit for hugging."

So he dozed off into the sleep which pure vice had taught him to take in snatches.

Meanwhile Âtma hurrying through the still deserted alleys felt her mind too much in a tumult for concentration; thus, as she almost ran past the high unarched doorways, the blank walls shutting out all things, the constant burr of the unseen hand-mills busy over their daily task of grinding flour came to join the unceasing burr of thought that whirled in her brain. Doubt as to her own wisdom had assailed her the night long, and now with this uncertitude concerning the fate of the diamond, she felt she could have killed herself for the part she had played in its theft. Why had she played it? Why? Why? The futility of fighting against Fate came home to her, as from a closed courtyard rose shrilly the voice of a woman chanting the song of the Grinding Stone and the Grounden Wheat:

Dust grind dust! She smote her hands together and sped on. She could at least challenge these men for the truth, and tell them that they lied. She had told no tales!

And as she made her breathless way toward Satanstown, Mirza IbrahÎm and Meean KhodadÂd were making their way back from it. They had gained nothing from Siyah Yamin save biting words and contemptuous gibes. She had done her part and there would be time to hold her fool when it was proved that Âtma had betrayed her. For herself, she did not believe it; and in so saying she for once spoke her real thought. She knew, briefly, that treachery was out of the question with her sister of the veil.

But the two men held, manlike, to what was on the surface.

"Fret not, KhodadÂd," said Mirza IbrahÎm with a sinister smile, as they passed out from the courtesan's house, "there is no hurry to settle scores with the madwoman. I, being Chamberlain, claim her as the King's woman, and then----"

"Then may I go shares with thee, or take thy leavings!" muttered KhodadÂd fiercely. "That may be thy revenge; but I am TarkhÂn."

"TarkhÂn or no, it grows too light for us now, Meean Sahib, so fare thee well for the time," remarked IbrahÎm significantly. And in truth the sky was beginning to show pearly over the pile of the city.

"TarkhÂns need no darkness for their deeds," retorted KhodadÂd recklessly. His temper, as ever, had overmastered him, he was literally beside himself with rage and disappointment. These two confederates were fools! What man could succeed, bound hand and foot by chicken-hearted cowards like IbrahÎm, and the rest of them? But he--aye! he would take revenge, dawn though it was! for he was TarkhÂn, accredited to evil deeds.

"To Siyah Yamin's Paradise," he said flinging himself into the palanquin which followed behind him. The madwoman lived in the same tenement. So much he knew, and the rest would come; if he had luck. If not there was no harm done. Pure devilry possessed him; he could not rest without some attempt at retaliation.

And so old Deena woke from his snatched snooze at whispering voices outside, followed by a steady calculated shouldering of the door, a slip of the ill-hasped chain, and the sudden consequent sprawl of half a dozen stalwart Abyssinians on to the roof.

"Back slaves!" said KhodadÂd, his voice low and hoarse with passion that leapt up with the chance of satisfaction. "And close the door behind you."

Old Deena scrambled to his feet. "My lord! my lord!" he expostulated, every atom of virtue in him rising up scandalised at the intrusion, all the more so perhaps, because of his loose life. "This roof is the abode of chastity."

"Fool!" said the TarkhÂn seizing him easily by the throat. "The woman--where is she? Speak low or I strangle thee."

"She--is--not here," gasped the old man--"Mercy lord! mercy!"

"Not here!--thou liest!"

Still holding Deena fast pinned against the wall KhodadÂd's eyes flashed round the roof. There were no shadows now; the morning light clear and fresh filled every corner.

"Ye gods! and devils!"

The words came low, almost soft, with the sudden inrush of admiration, as KhodadÂd's hands fell away from the old man's throat, and he took one step toward the bed.

"My lord! My lord!" cried Deena starting forward. "She is ill, she is a child--she is----"

He staggered back from the blow dealt him recklessly.

"She is beautiful--that is enough!" came with a chuckling laugh. "Wake, my houri! Wake up my peri of Paradise."

There was a faint scream, the mere cry, as it were, of a wounded bird. "Nay beauty! thou shalt kiss me! What! Scent of roses and no love? PÂh! how the perfume gets into my brain. Never but once before--but this is no time for the past! Nay! struggle not. Such beauty needs no veiling."

The little murmuring wail died to silence, and the half jibing voice was silent also. So, horror-struck, KhodadÂd stood for one instant before the deformity he had unshrouded. Then with a curse he turned and fled.

Deena, still dazed with the blow, crept over to the bed and covered crippledom again.

"Little one," he crooned, "there is no fear--he will not come back."

But there was no answer, and he leant swiftly to listen for a breath.

"Little one! Little one!" he cried. He could hear none, and as he stooped his wrinkled face puckering into tears, a voice behind him said quietly: "She is dead! Lo! it was time."

Deena turned to see the rebeck player who closing the door softly, came to stand beside the bed.

"Dead! Dead!" blubbered the old sinner. "Yea! Yea! it is so--his kisses killed her--only his kisses."

"Whose?"

The question echoed and re-echoed over the roof instinct with a sudden new fire, a sudden authority, and it reduced Deena to snivelling submission.

"Only a kiss lord, only a kiss; but Meean KhodadÂd----"

He paused struck dumb by the expression on the Wayfarer's face. Grief, horror, exultation showed on it, and over all a great awe as of one who sees a mystery.

"KhodadÂd! Oh! Thou most Mighty! KhodadÂd! It is the end."