and the maid, and all that was left of the vision was the ringing echo
of an iron lock dying away in dark corners and suggesting nothing
except secrecy.

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.