The spray of a hundred fountains was misty diamond dust in the warm air laden with the scent of myriad flowers. Kahdra followed us everywhere, singing his little tuneless happy song. The world brimmed with beauty and joy. And we were together. Words broke from me.
“Vanna, let it be for ever! Let us live here. I’ll give up all the world for this and you.”
“But you see,” she said delicately, “it would be ‘giving up.’ You use the right word. It is not your life. It is a lovely holiday, no more. You would weary of it. You would want the city life and your own kind.”
I protested with all my soul.
“No. Indeed I will say frankly that it would be lowering yourself to live a lotus-eating life among my people. It is a life with which you have no tie. A Westerner who lives like that steps down; he loses his birthright just as an Oriental does who Europeanizes himself. He cannot live your life nor you his. If you had work here it would be different. No—six or eight weeks more; then go away and forget it.”
I turned from her. The serpent was in Paradise. When is he absent?
On one of the terraces a man was beating a tom-tom, and veiled women listened, grouped about him in brilliant colours.
“Isn’t that all India?” she said; “that dull reiterated sound? It half stupefies, half maddens. Once at Darjiling I saw the Lamas’ Devil Dance—the soul, a white-faced child with eyes unnaturally enlarged, fleeing among a rabble of devils—the evil passions. It fled wildly here and there and every way was blocked. The child fell on its knees, screaming dumbly—you could see the despair in the staring eyes, but all was drowned in the thunder of Tibetan drums. No mercy—no escape. Horrible!”
“Even in Europe the drum is awful,” I said. “Do you remember in the French Revolution how they Drowned the victims’ voices in a thunder roll of drums?”
“I shall always see the face of the child, hunted down to hell, falling on its knees, and screaming without a sound, when I hear the drum. But listen—a flute! Now if that were the Flute of Krishna you would have to follow. Let us come!”