A malicious laugh came from one of the listeners in the arcade--a woman shrouded in a Pathan veil.
"'Tis as well his Majesty hath taken another cooling draught," came her voice shrilly. "What with writing letters for help to the Huzoors to please Ahsan-Oolah and Elahi-Buksh, and blessing faith to please the Queen, he hath enough to do in keeping his brain from getting dizzy with whirling this way and that. Mayhap faith will fail first, since it is not satisfied with blessings. They are windy diet, and I heard Mahboob say an hour agone that there was too much faith for the Treasury. Lo! moonshee-jee, put that fact down among thy heroics--they need balance!"
"Sure, niece Hâfzan," reproved the old editor of the Court Journal, "I see naught that needs it. Syyed Abdulla's periods fit the case as peas fit a pod; they hang together."
"As we shall when the Huzoors return," assented the voice from the veil.
"They will return no more, woman!" said another. It belonged to a man who leaned against a pilaster, looking dreamily out into the glare where, after a brief struggle, the band of fighters for the faith had pushed aside the timid door-keepers and forced their way to the inner garden. Through the open door they showed picturesquely, surging down the path, backed by green foliage and the white dome of the Pearl Mosque rising against the blue sky.
"The Faith! The Faith! We come to fight for the Faith!"
Their cry echoed over the drowsy, dreaming crowds, making men turn over in their sleep; that was all.
But the dreaminess grew in the face looking at the vista through the open door till its eyes became like those Botticelli gives to his Moses--the eyes of one who sees a promised land--and the dreamy voice went on:
"How can they return; seeing that He is Lord and Master? Changing the Day to Darkness, the Darkness into Day. Holding the unsupported skies, proving His existence by His existence, Omnipotent. High in Dignity, the Avenger of His Faithful people."
The old editor waggled his head with delighted approval; the author fidgeted over an eloquence not his own; but Hâfzan's high laugh rang cynically: