Here, on the platform, Hâfzan paused again to look over the low parapet. The wide eastern plains stretched away to the pale blue horizon before her, and the curving river lay at her feet edging the high bank, faced with stone, which forms the eastern defense of the palace-fort. Thus the levels within touch the very top of the wall; so that the domes, and colonnades, and green gardens, when seen from the opposite side of the streams cut clear upon the sky, like a castle in the air at all times; but in the sunsettings, when they show in shades of pale lilac, with the huge dome of the great mosque bulging like a big bubble into the golden light behind them as a veritable Palace of Dreams.
She looked northward, first; along the sheer face of the rosy retaining wall to its trend westward at the Queen's favorite bastion, which was crowned by a balconied summer-house overhanging the moat between the fort itself and the isolated citadel of Selimgurh; which, jutting out into the river, partially hid the bridge of boats spanning the stream beyond. Then she looked southward. Here was the sheer face of rosy wall again, but it was crowned, close at hand, by the colonnade and projecting eaves of the Private Hall of Audience. Further on it was broken by the carved corbeilles of the King's balcony, and it ended abruptly at a sudden eastward turn of the river, so giving a view of rolling rocky hillocks sweeping up to the horizon where, faint and far like a spear-point, the column of the Kutb showed on a clear day. The Kutb! that splendid promise, never fulfilled,--that first minaret of the great mosque that never was, and never will be built; symbol of the undying dream of Mohammedan supremacy that never came, that never can come to pass.
As she paused, a troop of women laden with cosmetics and combs and quaint baskets containing endless aids to beauty, came shuffling out of the baths, gossiping and chattering shrilly, and clanking heavy anklets as they came. And with them, a heavy perfumed steam suggestive of warm indolence, luxury, sensuality, passed out into the garden.
"What! done already?" called Hâfzan in surprise.
"Already!" echoed a bold-faced trollop pertly, "Ari, sister. Art grown a loose-liver? Sure this is Friday, and the King, good man, bathes apart, religiously! So we be religious too, matching his humor. That is the way with us women."
An answering giggle met the sally.
"Thou art an impudent hussy, Goloo!" said Hâfzan angrily. "And the Queen--where is she?"
"In the mosque praying for patience--in the summer-house playing games--in the King's room coaxing him to belief--in the vestibule feeding her son with lollipops--he likes them big, and sweet, and lively, and of his own choosing, does the prince, as I know to my cost." Here a general titter broke in on the unabashed recital.
"Loh! leave Hâfzan to find out what the Queen does elsewhere," suggested another voice. "We speak not of such things."
"Then speak lower of others," retorted Hâfzan. "Walls have echoes, sister, and thy mistress would fare no better than others if thy talk reached Zeenut Maihl's ears."