“Asleep?”
She saw caution steal into his frank eyes and drop a curtain before them.
“Why do you ask? Everyone dreams.”
She gathered up all her courage for the next question.
“Were you ever in the Shalimar?”
“Certainly. Does anyone ever go to Kashmir and miss it?”
He was fencing, that was palpable. It gave her hope for a golden gleam through her fear. She clasped her shaking hands tightly in each other.
“I have the strangest dreams. I can only bring back snatches. Yet I know there is a wonderful connected story behind them. I dreamt the Shalimar not long ago,—I brought back one image. A woman in an old Persian dress sitting by the black Pampoor pillars and looking down into the water where the moon dipped and swam all gold.”
“Yes, yes, go on!” he breathed.
“There were flowers—white flowers. I never saw them there in the daylight.”