"Then there must be proof. What proof hast thou?" His voice softened slightly with the words.
Âtma Devi standing tall and straight flung her left arm skyward. "I have none! None; save my own word. I saw it--we were children and I cried because she left me. Yea! I remember the bitterness of my tears."
There was a sudden gay laugh from the veilings at her side, a sudden wreathing and curving of draperies, and in an instant the woman within them stood revealed; revealed, not as the late wedded bride, not even as Siyah Yamin the courtesan, but as Siyâla the dancing girl of the Gods. Her nut-brown body, bare save for the tiny gold-encrusted bodice following each swelling line of her bosom, rose, seductively supple, from the innumerable fulnesses of the thin white muslin skirt which after clinging close to the loveliness of curve from hip to knees, fulled out like a bursting flower weighted by its heavy banding of gold tissue. She wore no veil, but her loose flowing hair was wreathed with jasmine chaplets, and round her neck, floating with each exquisite movement of her arms, was a multi-coloured gossamer silk scarf, rainbow hued, evanescent, ever-recurring, holding in its loopings, its doublings, something of the absolute grace of a coiling serpent.
And through the wide hall packed full of men instinct with anger, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness, there ran, swiftly, at the mere sight of her, a common admiration, a common tremor of fear and hope.
Even the King stepped back from her pure womanhood.
"Lo! Weep not Âto! Wherefore should any weep; when all life is for laughter!" she said, and her polished voice sounded mysteriously sweet. "Great King! she says truth. I am Siyâl belovéd of the Gods, beloved of the Godhead in the man. I am no man's wife. I am no man's mistress. I am free to have and hold."
She flung both arms forward to the crowd and the rainbow scarf leaping up formed a halo round her head.
"Come! Come!" she murmured deeply, almost drowsily, "but seek not to bind. Or ever you were, I was. Yet I am yours!" Her eyes flashed down upon those liveried bearers of her dhooli, servants of her courtesanship. "Raise me shoulder high, slaves," she cried, "so that all may see Siyâl the Belovéd of the Gods, the beloved by men."
So shoulder high she stood smiling while a hoarse passionate breath surged through the vast assembly.
And then, suddenly, she set up the oldest chant in the world, the golden jingles about her feet clashing to its rhythm, the heavy gold bracelets sliding and clashing on her arms as she waved them in the dance of the devaad-asi--