The good square room she had entered so abruptly unannounced was swept and washed. Sunlight poured into it at one end through a window that opened on an inner courtyard, and there were flowers everywhere— arranged in an enormous brass bowl on a little table—scattered at random on the floor—hung in plaited garlands from the hooks intended to support lamps. Of furniture there was little, only a long cushioned bench down the length of the wall beneath the window, and a thing like a throne on which Jinendra's high priest sat in solitary grandeur.
He did not rise at first to greet her, for Jinendra's priest was fat; there was no gainsaying it. After about a minute a sort of earthquake taking place in him began to reach the surface; he rocked on his center in increasing waves that finally brought him with a spasm of convulsion to the floor. There he stood in full sunlight with his bare toes turned inward, holding his stomach with both hands, while Yasmini settled herself in graceful youthful curves on the cushioned bench, with her face in shadow, and the smirking maid at her feet. Then before climbing ponderously back to his perch on the throne the priest touched his forehead once with both hands and came close to a semblance of bowing, the arrogance of sanctity combining with his paunch to cut that ceremony short.
"Send the girl away," he suggested as soon as he was settled into place again. But Yasmini laughed at him with that golden note of hers that suggests illimitable understanding and unfathomable mirth.
"I know the ways of priests," she answered. "The girl stays!"
The priest's fat chops darkened a shade.
"There are things she should not know."
"She knows already more in her small head than there is in all thy big belly, priest of an idol!"
"Beware, woman, lest the gods hear sacrilege!"
"If they are real gods they love me," she answered, "If they have any sense they will be pleased whenever I laugh at your idolatry. Hasamurti stays."
"But at the first imaginary insult she will run with information to wherever it will do most harm. If she can be made properly afraid, perhaps—"