"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.