Morning looks down into Khinjan hours after the sun has risen, because the precipices shut it out. But the peaks on every side are very beacons of the range at the earliest peep of dawn. In silence they watched day's herald touch the peaks with rosy jeweled fingers--she waiting as if she expected the marvel of it all to make King speak. It was cold. She came and snuggled close to him, and it was so they watched the sparkle of dawn's jewels die and the peaks grow gray again, she with an arm on his shoulder and strands of her golden hair blown past his face. “Of what are you thinking?” she asked him at last. “Of India, Princess.” “What of India?” “She lies helpless.” “Ah! You love India?” “Yes.” “You shall love me better! You shall love me better than your life! Then, for love of me, you shall own the India you think you love! This letter shall go!” She tapped her bosom. “It is best to cut you off from India first. You shall lose that you may win!” She got up and stood in the gap, smiling mockingly, framed in the darkness of the cave behind. “I understand!” she said. “You think you are my enemy. Love and hate never lived side by side. You shall see!” Then in an instant she was gone, backward into the dark. He sat and waited for her, cross-legged on the ledge. As daylight began to filter downward he could dimly make out the waterfall, thundering like the whelming of a world; he sat staring at it, trying to formulate a plan, until it dawned on him that he was nearly chilled to the bone. Then he got up and stepped through the gap, too. “Princess!” he called. Then louder, “Princess!” When the echo of his own voice died, it was as if the ghoul who made the echoes had taken shape. A beard--red eye-rims--and a hook nose came out of the dark, and Ismail bared yellow teeth. “Come!” he said. “Come, little hakim!” Chapter XV Private preserves? New Notions? Measure me a quart of honesty, And I will trade it for a pound weight of my thoughts. Then you and I shall go and dream together A brand-new dream of things that never happened, Nor ever can be. Come, trade with me! What Yasmini had been doing in the minutes while King stared from the ledge in the dawn was unguessable. Perhaps she had been praying to her old gods. At least she had given Ismail strict orders, for he said nothing, but seized King's hand and led him through the dark as a rat leads a blind one--swiftly, surely, unhesitating. King had no means whatever of guessing their direction. They did not pass the two lights again with the curtain and the steps all glowing red. They came instead to other steps, narrow and steep, that led upward in a semicircle to a rough hole in a rock wall. At the top there was a little yellow light, so dim and small that its rays scarcely sufficed to show the opening. “Go up!” said Ismail, giving King a shove and disappearing at once. One side-step into blackness and he might have been a mile away.