"Till the death?"
"Till--death."
After Âtma had gone the courtesan sate for a while as if half-paralysed; she had gone further than was safe, seeing that she was to use Âtma as a tool; a half-crazed tool. Then she looked about her. The heat of the day was waxing. Below her the bazaar, becoming drowsy, was leaving a thousand wickednesses to welter and fester under the noon-tide sun while it slipped from them for a while in sleep; leaving them restlessly active, ceaselessly on the move like molecules in a sunray; thought hustling thought, intention seeking desire, making evil ready for the awakening of men to find a new stimulus to wrongdoing in the coolness of the afternoon. It was always so. Evil grew day by day. There was nothing else alive in the whole world.
So by degrees courage and confidence returned.
"Send for Pâhlu, the prince of thieves," she said "and bid Pooru, the false gem-maker, be here when I awaken. Meanwhile, let Deena take this to Diswunt at the Hall of Labour."
She sate for a second, pen in hand, cogitating half amusedly; then with a sudden smile wrote in delicate curvings a verse from Sa'adi's "Lamp and the Moth":
Oh! fearful tearful lover! Cease to sigh,
Passion's worst pangs thou knowest not--as I.
Leave pining, leave lamenting and be bolder
Woman yields readiest to those who hold her.
So, swallowing a perfumed pill of opium all sugar coated and silvered, she, too, slept in her balcony.
[CHAPTER XII]
Live in the living hour,
Fortune is fickle.
To thy lips, laughing flower,
Let good wine trickle.
Who hoardeth wealth to leave
He is a ne'er-do-well.
Who lives to rail and grieve
He is an infidel.
Rest in thy cypress shade,
Fill the cup higher,
Drink to each merry maid,
Drink to desire.
So saith the cup bearer,
So sings the lyre.