Chapter Thirteen

Of what use were the gift of gods,
The buoyant sweetness of a virgin state,
The blossomy delight of youth
Ablow with promise of fruit consummate;
What use the affluence of song
And marvel of delicious motion meet
To grace the very revelings of Fawn,
Could she not lay them at another’s feet?

“I am a king’s daughter!”

That was a night when the full-moon rose in a sea of silver, and changed into amber as it mounted in the sky.  The light shone like liquid honey, and the shadowed earth was luminous and still.  The very deepest of the shadows glowed with undertones of half-suggested color.  Hardly a zephyr moved.

“You see?” said Yasmini.  “The gods are our servants!  They have set the stage!”

Hand in hand—­Yasmini in the midst in spotless silken white; Tess and Hasamurti draped in black from head to foot—­they left the house by a high teak door in the garden wall and started down a road half hidden by lacy shadows.  All three wore sandals on bare feet, and Tess was afraid at first of insects.

“Have no fear of anything tonight,” Yasmini whispered.  “The gods are all about us!  Wasuki, who is king of all the snakes, is on our side!”

One could not speak aloud, for the spell of mystery overlay everything.  They walked into the very heart of silent beauty.  Overhead, enormous trees, in which the sacred monkeys slept, dropped tendrils like long arms yearning with the love of mother earth.  Here and there the embers of a dying fire glowed crimson, and the only occasional sound was of sleepy cattle that chewed the cud contentedly—­or when a monkey moved above them to change his roost.  Once, a man’s voice singing by a fireside conjured back for a moment the world’s hard illusion; but the stillness and the mystery overcame him too, and all was true again, and wonderful.

Hand in hand they followed the road to its end and turned into a lane between thorn hedges.  Now the moon shone straight toward them and there was no shadow, so that the earth was bright golden underfoot—­ a lane of mellow light on which they trod between fantastic woven walls.  At the end of the lane they came into a clearing at a forested-edge, where an ancient ruined temple nestled in the shadow of great trees, its stone front and the seated image of a long-neglected god restored to more than earthly sanctity and peace by the cool, caressing moonlight.

“Jinendra again!” Yasmini whispered.  “Always Jinendra!  His priests are rascals, but the god himself is kind!  When I am maharanee, that temple shall stand whole again!”

In front of the temple, between them and the trees, was a pond edged with carved stone.  Lotus leaves floated on the water, and one blue flower was open wide to welcome whoever loved serenity.

Still hand in hand, they crossed the clearing mid-way to the pond, and there Yasmini bade them stand.