In truth her entry brought a new note to the chord of womanhood which vibrated in the atmosphere; a note that was foreign to its harmony. A quick sense of tragedy came to the comedy of laughing ladies. Something in Âtma's womanly face and figure that was in them also, disguised, tucked away, hidden out of sight but still recognisable made them recoil to silence. Perhaps it was the "Not womanhood" of the dark days before Sex shows itself--the Not-womanhood which, with the "Not-manhood," go to make up the Paradise Life in which there shall be neither male nor female.
Âtma felt the recoil herself as her dark eyes questioned the scene before them, challenging it in swift antagonism. For the past two days her thoughts had been concentrated on her search for some clue of Siyah Yamin. She had drifted about the bazaars, giving her curious cry, she had watched at street corners, and listened patiently through the hurly-burly of passing voices for some hint, some sound. Without avail; and time was running short; she would not have wasted one minute of it in obeying Aunt Rosebody's order to attend at the palace but for a dazed sense of duty. She, the King's Châran, must not neglect royal commands; even Siyah Yamin must give way to them.
Siyah Yamin! Siyah Yamin! Ye Gods! why had either of those two children who had played together, grown up to be women? Why should any woman-child grow up to be hampered by her sex, left helpless?
Âtma's thoughts as she stood mechanically shaking the hour-glass drum, paused; her eyes in the darkness to which they were becoming accustomed had found something which brought answer to her questioning.
It was Mihr-un-nissa, who, barely veiled by silver tissue, sate a little way apart from the others on a yellow silken rug; her slender arms were around her knees, her head was tilted back against the wall on which a flower garland of the inlaid mosaic seemed to frame her delicate face, as through half-closed lids she returned the singer's stare.
"Art thou a witch-wife?" asked the little maid suddenly, as if none but they two were in the room. "Lo! I am Mihr-un-nissa, Queen of Women. Tell me--shall I indeed be Queen not of them only, but of men also?"
The brushers and dressers paused in their avocations to look and listen. Something insistent, compellent, seemed to have come into the atmosphere. Even Auntie Rosebody paused in the sipping of her sherbet and waited for the answer to that still-childish voice.
And those two stared at each other, feeling vaguely akin; the woman who strove to forget her sex in a man's work, the girl who cherished it as a means of gaining a like power.
"I offer excuse for interference," came Râkiya Begum's rasping voice, "but soothsaying except by reference to the Holy Book----"
"'Tis but for fun, Most Noble," pleaded Umm Kulsum, who was invariably the smoother of difficulties, "and they did it at the Holy City, for I paid seven golden ashrafees to a woman with a crystal who told me naught that I did not know before."