always when she felt it.

The minor music ceased and all eyes in the room were turned to her.
She rose to her feet as a hooded cobra comes toward its prey, sparing
a sidewise surreptitious smile of confidence for Ranjoor Singh that
no eye caught save his; yet as she turned from him and swayed in the
first few steps of a dance devised that minute, his quick ear caught
the truth of her opinion:

"Buffalo!" she murmured.

The flutes in the window wailed about mystery. The lights, and the
sandal-smoke, and the expectant silence emphasized it. Step by step,
as if the spirit of all dancing had its home in her, she told a
wordless tale, using her feet and every sinuous muscle as no other
woman in all India ever did.

Men say that Yasmini is partly Russian, and that may be true, for
she speaks Russian fluently. Russian or not, the members of the
Russian ballet are the only others in the world who share her art.
Certainly, she keeps in touch with Russia, and knows more even than
the Indian government about what goes on beyond India's northern
frontier. She makes and magnifies the whole into a mystery; and her
dance that night expressed the fascination mystery has for her.

And then she sang. It is her added gift of song that makes Yasmini
unique, for she can sing in any of a dozen languages, and besides the
love-songs that come southward from the hills, she knows all the
interminable ballads of the South and the Central Provinces. But
when, as that evening, she is at her best, mixing magic under the