"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:
Red Sandstone and red-husked wheat
Whirl in your dancing, part and meet
My right hand is your master,
What if the stone be rushed?
What if the grain be crushed?
Men and women must eat,
The cry of the child be hushed.
Whirl faster and faster,
God's right hand is our master!
What though Love mates with Lust,
Though Just yield to Unjust,
What care the Stone and the Wheat,
For men and women must eat,
The cry of the child be hushed,
So Dust grind Dust!
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.