And Yasmini had loved dancing since the days when she tottered her first steps for her mother’s and Bubru Singh’s delight.  Long before an American converted the Russian Royal Ballet, and the Russian Royal Ballet in return took all the theatre-going West by storm—­scandalizing, then amazing, then educating bit by bit—­Yasmini had developed her own ideas and brought them by arduous practise to something near perfection.  To that her strength, agility and sinuous grace were largely due; and she practised no deceptions on herself, but valued all three qualities for their effect on other people, keeping no light under a bushel.

The consciousness of that night’s climactic quality raised her spirits to the point where they were irrepressible, and she danced her garments off one by one, using each in turn as a foil for her art until there was nothing left with which to multiply rhythm and she danced before the long French mirrors yet more gracefully with nothing on at all.

Getting Tess disrobed was a different matter.  She did not own to much prudery, but the maids’ eyes were over-curious.  And, lacking, as she knew she did, Yasmini’s ability to justify nakedness by poetry of motion, she hid behind a curtain and was royally laughed at for her pains.  But she was satisfied to retain that intangible element that is best named dignity, and let the laughter pass unchallenged.  Yasmini, with her Eastern heritage, could be dignified as well as beautiful as nature made her.  Not so Tess, or at any rate she thought not, and what one thinks is after all the only gage acceptable.

Then came the gorgeous fun of putting on Tess’s clothes, each to be danced in as its turn came, and made fun of, so that Tess herself began to believe all Western clothes were awkward, idiotic things—­until Yasmini stood clothed complete at last, with her golden hair all coiled under a Paris hat, and looked as lovely that way as any.  The two women were almost exactly the same size.  Even the shoes fitted, and when Yasmini walked the length of the room with Tess’s very stride and attitude Tess got her first genuine glimpse of herself as another’s capably critical eyes saw her—­a priceless experience, and not so humiliating after all.

They dressed up Tess in man’s clothes—­a young Rajput’s—­a suit Yasmini had worn on one of her wild excursions, and what with the coiled turban of yellow silk and a little black mustache adjusted by cunning fingers she felt as happy as a child in fancy dress.  But she found it more difficult to imitate the Rajput walk than Yasmini did to copy her tricks of carriage.  For a few minutes they played at walking together up and down the room before the mirror, applauded by the giggling maids.  But then suddenly came anti-climax.  There was a great hammering at the outer door, and one of the maids ran down to investigate, while they waited in breathless silence.

The news the maid brought back was the worst imaginable.  The look-out at the northern corner of the wall (Yasmini kept watch on her captors as rigorously as they spied on her) had run with the word to the gateman that Gungadhura himself was coming with three eunuchs, all four on foot.