"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!"