Her face was fixed and strange, for a moment her cheek looked hollow, her eyes dim and grief-worn. What was she seeing?—what remembering? Was it a story—a memory? What was it?
“She was beautiful?” I prompted.
“Men have said so, but for it he surrendered the Peace. Do not speak of her accursed beauty.”
Her voice died away to a drowsy murmur; her head dropped on my shoulder and for the mere delight of contact I sat still and scarcely breathed, praying that she might speak again, but the good minute was gone. She drew one or two deep breaths, and sat up with a bewildered look that quickly passed.
“I was quite sleepy for a minute. The climb was so strenuous. Hark—I hear the Flute of Krishna again.”
And again I could hear nothing, but she said it was sounding from the trees at the base of the hill. Later when we climbed down I found she was right—that a peasant lad, dark and amazingly beautiful as these Kashmiris often are, was playing on the flute to a girl at his feet—looking up at him with rapt eyes. He flung Vanna a flower as we passed. She caught it and put it in her bosom. A singular blossom, three petals of purest white, set against three leaves of purest green, and lower down the stem the three green leaves were repeated. It was still in her bosom after dinner, and I looked at it more closely.
“That is a curious flower,” I said. “Three and three and three. Nine. That makes the mystic number. I never saw a purer white. What is it?”
“Of course it is mystic,” she said seriously. “It is the Ninefold Flower. You saw who gave it?”
“That peasant lad.”
She smiled.