they sweet?"

He had jumped so as to face about, and somebody laughed at him.
Yasmini stood not two arms' lengths away, lovelier than the dead
woman because of the merry life in her, young and warm, aglow, but
looking like the dead woman and the woman of the frieze--the woman
of the lamp--bowls--the statue--come to life, speaking to him in
English more sweetly than if it had been her mother tongue. The
English abuse their language. Yasmini caressed it and made it do
its work twice over.

Being dressed as a native, he salaamed low. Knowing him for what
he was, she gave him the senna-stained tips of her warm fingers to kiss,
and he thought she trembled when he touched them. But a second later
she had snatched them away and was treating him to raillery.

"Man of pills and blisters!" she said, "tell me how those bodies
are preserved! Spill knowledge from that learned skull of thine!"

He did not answer. He never shone in conversation at any time,
having made as many friends as enemies by saying nothing until the
spirit moves him. But she did not know that yet.

"If I knew for certain why those two did not turn to worms," she
went on, "almost I would choose to die now, while I am beautiful!
Think of the fogy museum men! (She called them by a far less
edifying name, really, for the East is frank in that way, especially
in its use of other tongues.) "What would they say, think you,
King sahib, if they found us two dead beside those two? Would not
that be a mystery? Don't you love mysteries? Speak, man, speak!