She sat under a hard white light directed from behind a lattice in the wall that would have exaggerated the slightest imperfection of looks or manner; and she looked like a fairy-book queen—like the queen you used to think of in the nursery when your aunt read stories to you and the illustrated Sunday supplements had not yet disillusioned you as to how queens wear their hats.
She was Titania, with a touch of Diana the Huntress, and decidedly something of Athena, goddess of wisdom, clothed in flowing cream that showed the outlines of her figure, and with sandals on her bare feet. Not a diamond. Not a jewel of any kind. Her hair was bound up in the Grecian fashion and shone like yellow gold.
Surely she seemed to have been born for the very purpose of presiding. Perhaps she was the only one who was at ease, for the others shifted restlessly behind their veils and had that vague, uncertain air that goes with inexperience—although one woman, larger looking than the rest, and veiled in embroidered black instead of colors, sat on a chair near the throne with a rather more nervy-looking outline. There were more than a hundred women in there all told.
Yasmini's change of countenance at sight of my predicament was instantaneous. I don't doubt it was her fault that I had been mistreated on the way up, for these women had seen me bound by her orders and mocked by her a couple of hours previously. But now she saw fit to seem indignant at the treatment I had suffered, and she made even the ranks of veiled princesses shudder as she rose and stormed at my captors, giving each word a sort of whip-lash weight.
"Shall a guest of mine suffer in my house?"
One of the women piped up with a complaint against me. I had trodden on her foot and crushed her against a door-jamb.
"Would he had slain you!" she retorted. "She-dog! Take her away! I will punish her afterward! Who stuck pins into him? Speak, or I will punish all of you!"
None owned up, but three or four of them who had not been able to come near enough to do me any damage betrayed the others, so she ordered all except four of them out of the room to await punishment at her convenience. And then she proceeded to apologize to me with such royal grace and apparent sincerity that I wondered whom she suspected of overhearing her. Wondering, my eyes wandering, I noticed the woman veiled in black. She was an elderly looking female, rather crouched up in her gorgeous shawl as if troubled with rheumatism, and neither her hands nor her feet were visible, both being hidden in the folds of the long sari.
The next instant Yasmini flew into a passion because the Mahatma and I were kept standing. The Mahatma was not standing, as a matter of fact; he had already squatted on the floor beside me. The women brought us stools, but the Mahatma refused his. Thinking I might be less conspicuous sitting than standing I sat down on my stool, whereat Yasmini began showering the women with abuse for not having supplied me with better garments. Considering the long swim, the dusty ride on an elephant, and two fights with women, during which they had been ripped nearly into rags, the clothes weren't half-bad!
So they brought me a silken robe that was woven all over with pictures of the Indian gods. And I sat feeling rather like a Roman, with that gorgeous toga wrapped around me; I might have been bearing Rome's ultimatum to the Amazons, supposing those bellicose ladies to have existed in Rome's day.