She pirouetted a dozen times on bare toes at the top of the stairs, spinning until her silken skirts expanded in a nimbus, then danced down-stairs into Tess’s arms, where she clung, panting and laughing.

“I’m so hungry!  Oh, I’m hungry!  Did you bring the food?”

“I’m ashamed!” Tess answered.  “The man set it down outside the door and I left it there.”

But Yasmini gave a little shrill of delight, and Tess turned to see that another maid had brought it.

“How many of you are there?”

“Five.”

“Thank heaven!  I’ve brought enough for a square meal for a dozen.”

“We have eaten a little, little bit each day of the servants’ rice, washing it first for hours, until today, when two of the servants were taken sick and we thought perhaps their food was poisoned too.  Oh, we’re hungry!”

Hasamurti, Yasmini’s maid, opened the basket on the floor and crowed aloud.  Tess apologized.

“I knew nothing about the caste restrictions, but I’ve put in meat jelly—­ and bread—­and fruit—­and rice—­and nuts—­and milk—­and tea—­and wine—­ and sugar—­”

Yasmini laughed.

“I am as Western as I choose to be, and only pretend to caste when I see fit.  My maids do as I do, or they seek another mistress.  Come!”

Hasamurti would have spread a banquet there on the floor, but Yasmini led them up-stairs, holding Tess by the hand, turning to the right at the stairhead into a room all cream and golden, lighted by hanging lamps that shone through disks of colored glass.  There she pulled Tess down beside her on to a great soft divan and they all ate together, the maids munching their share while they served their mistress.  They devoured the milk, and left the wine, eating, all things considered, astonishingly moderately.

“Now we ought all to go to sleep,” announced Yasmini, yawning, and then bubbling with delighted laughter at the expression of Tess’s face.  “The people outside might wait!”

“Great heavens, child.  Do you suppose I can stay here indefinitely?” Tess demanded.  “I must be gone in an hour or my husband will murder the guard and force an entrance!”

“I will have just such a husband soon,” announced Yasmini.  “When I send him one little word, he will cut the throats of thirty men and come to me through flames!  Let us try your husband,” she added as an afterthought—­then laughed again at Tess’s expression of dissent, and nodded.

“I, too, will be careful how I risk my husband!  Men are but moths in a woman’s hands—­fragile—­but the good ones are precious.  Besides, we have no time tonight for sport.  I must escape.”

Evidently Tess was causing her exquisite amusement.  The thought of being an accomplice in any such adventure stirred all her Yankee common sense to its depths, and she had none of the Eastern trick of not displaying her emotions.

“Nonsense, child!  Let me go to the commissioner and warn him that you are being starved to death in this place.  I will threaten him with public scandal if he doesn’t put an end to it at once.”