Ahalya’s eyes shone. “And thou—what didst thou, my lord?”

“I gave the fellow ten lashes for his impertinence. But I like him, and I shall keep him in my service.”

“Keep a prince for thy slave, lord?”

“Whoorroo, Ahalya! Thou hast his tongue to-night. Come; I am weary of talking. Dance for me—the poppy dance, if thou wilt, now we are alone.”

Ahalya rose submissively, and poised herself, while the Rajah lay back in deep comfort on his pillows. She was a beautiful dancer when she chose to dance; and she could hum her own music, beating the rhythm with her feet as she swayed slowly from one posture to another. But she did not dance the poppy dance to-night. She only made a series of tableaux that would have delighted the soul of an artist, and which fully satisfied the eyes of the Rajah. Ahalya circled round him like some broad-winged bird, moving more and more lightly, becoming more and more cloudlike to his stilling senses. And presently when, out of her gauzy mist, the Ranee looked at him, she perceived that his eyes were closed and that his breath was coming deeply and regularly.

Ahalya experienced a sudden feeling of relief. He slept. His sleep would wear the night away. She was free to go. Joyously, softly, swiftly, she passed out of that room and the next; but in the antechamber beyond she paused. Three or four rooms and a passage lay between her and the zenana. These she appeared to be in no haste to traverse. Halting indecisively, she stood looking about her as if in search of something—or some one; and her brow was drawn in meditation. Then, all at once, she started, not in the direction of her apartments, but through another door that led off into a long range of rooms, little used, in one of which the captive slave of Rai-Khizar-Pál had had the audacity to sleep on the first night of his coming to Mandu; and the use of which the lenient Rajah had afterward granted him. As she continued on her way, Ahalya’s excitement and her speed increased until she was fairly running along, her eyes, meantime, swiftly examining each room as soon as she entered it. At last, when her breath had become panting, and her color unnaturally brilliant; when, as it would seem, she began to realize what she was doing, she reached, by her devious route, the antechamber to the zenana, where an eunuch stood on guard. And he stared in amazement at her flushed and frowning face as she hurried past him into her voluntary captivity.

It was as well that the Ranee Ahalya sought her sleep that night without having peered out of her screened windows into the inner court; for had she done so, she might have found by accident that which she had unsuccessfully sought. For, till a very late hour that night, Fidá, the slave, risking his life, crouched in the shadow of the fountain of that court, watching, with burning eyes, the glow of a single lamp that shone in the Lady Ahalya’s rooms: a lamp which, though he knew it not, was never extinguished. And so, when weariness finally overcame him, he crept away without learning whether or not the lady of his dreams was sleeping behind her imprisoning walls.

CHAPTER IV
THE ASRA RUBY

It was some time past midnight when Fidá, baffled and exhausted, returned to his antechamber, and, wrapping himself in his white cloak, lay down on the floor. Weary as he was, he could not sleep at once, but lay for a little while thinking profitlessly on what he had done. Fate had twice given him that which he had not sought. But now, trying to circumvent Fate, he had been doubly defeated; for, had he been where he should that evening, Ahalya, in her reckless search, must have come upon him. This, happily, he did not know; but he was none the less unrighteously angry at his failure to find out something, even the smallest, of her habits. Her habits! Reason, which he had persistently smothered, rose up against him, and began to lay before him certain grim truths. This woman, of whom his nearly every waking thought was now composed, was a Ranee—a queen, a wife. To her he was an outcast, and yet he had dared to lift his thoughts to her. Fool that he was, he had got himself into a state men called love! What love could be more unholy than his? She was a Ranee. But, argued his other self, he was himself a prince by birth, and the actual head of a great race. Nevertheless, this race of his was a strangely unhappy one; and he, Fidá, had, all his life till now, persistently avoided women; for to his family women were fatal. He had taken the highest pride in his reputation for coldness, for chastity, for temperance. At sixteen he had left Yemen to put himself under the guardianship of his uncle,—a power at the court of Delhi; and, upon his departure for India, he had vowed lifelong devotion to the extension of the Prophet’s power; and had determined to allow no human temptation to conquer him. This present matter, however, he protested, was no temptation. It was even most unlikely that he should see the woman again, considering the difference in their present stations. Nevertheless, after a little more chaotic thinking, Fidá took from a certain secure hiding-place in his vestment a tiny golden box, scarcely half an inch square, fastened by a minute spring. Without opening it, he clasped this box closely to his breast; and, as if it held some magic power, under its pressure he grew calm again, his brain ceased to throb, sleep stole upon him, and little by little his hold on it relaxed, till at last his hand fell from his breast and his treasure rolled upon the floor.

Fidá’s awakening was sudden. The tones of a loud voice, calling confusedly, mingled themselves with his dreams. Then he sprang to his feet to find the Rajah standing over him, in a most dishevelled state, crying to him to bring drinking-water, instantly. And Fidá, startled and sleepy, hurried away on his errand.