Inside the carriage, with a lot more chuckling and giggling a change was taking place almost as complete as that from chrysalis to butterfly.  The toilet of a lady of Yasmini’s nice discrimination takes time in the easiest circumstances; in a lumbering coach, not built for leg-room, and with a looking-glass the size of a saucer, it was a mixture of horse-play and miracle.  Between them they upset the perfume bottle, as was natural, and a shrill scream at one stage of the journey (that started a rumor all over Sialpore to the effect that Gungadhura was up to the same old game again) announced, as a matter of plain fact that Yasmini had sat on the spurs.  There was long, spun-gold hair to be combed out—­penciling to do to eye-brows—­lac to be applied to pretty feet to make them exquisitely pretty—­and layer on layer of gossamer silk to be smothered and hung exactly right.  Then over it all had to go one of those bright-hued silken veils that look so casually worn but whose proper adjustment is an art.

But when they reached the bottom of the long hill and began twisting in and out among the narrow streets, it was finished.  By the time they reached the temple of Jinendra, set back in an old stone courtyard with images of the placid god carved all about in the shade of the wide projecting cornice, all was quiet and orderly inside the carriage and there stepped out of it, followed by the same dark-hooded maid, a swift vision of female loveliness that flitted like a flash of light into the temple gloom.

It was not so squalid as the usual Hindu temple, although so ancient that the carving of the pillars in some places was almost worn away, and the broad stone flags on the floor were hollowed deep by ages of devotion.  The gloom was pierced here and there by dim light from brass lamps, that showed carvings blackened by centuries of smoke, but there was an unlooked-for suggestion of care, and a little cleanliness that the fresh blossoms scattered here and there accentuated.

There were very few worshipers at that hour—­only a woman, who desired a child and was praying to Jinendra as a last recourse after trying all the other gods in vain, and a half-dozen men—­all eyes—­who gossiped in low tones in a corner.  Yasmini gave them small chance to recognize her.  Quicker than their gaze could follow, a low door at the rear, close beside the enormous, jeweled image of the god, closed behind her 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.