The memory of the old man's voice, when, with new-found courage, she had questioned him concerning those old days, made her eyes soft. Yes! he would, he _must_ understand. So, by and by, when Vincent and she were tired of playing Romeo and Juliet (the story of the star-crossed lovers had been her only reading since Vincent had taken to quoting so much from it) they would make Pidar Narâyan play Friar Laurence, and marry them on the sly. That would be so much more amusing than a regular wedding. He could not refuse, since he had once loved as she loved. You could hear that in his voice; after how many years?--fifty or sixty! And the Princess had, of course, loved also in exactly the same way. Laila felt sure of it. That curious, inexpressible feeling had come to her also. Laila, trying to formulate that feeling, slipping her heel idly in and out of her dainty little bronze shoe as she lounged, suddenly remembered Vincent's song to the tambourine, and laughed. That was it! "Golden feet upon a golden stair." That expressed it exactly. Two pair of feet going side by side up a golden stair, to golden gates. So contented. Ah, God! how content! Seeking something, claiming something, yet still content. That feeling came, sometimes, when you were saying your prayers. A sort of yearning _for_, a sort of satisfaction _in_, something that was not you; so, surely if it came _then_, there could be no harm in it. Harm! The very sisters allowed that you must love the man you were going to marry. And she and Vincent would be married by and by and live happily, for that was better than having a "_statue of pure gold_" erected to you! In the meantime, secrecy, so long as Vincent wished to play Romeo and Juliet, was her cue; therefore, the more she could blind old Akbar, the more he could be turned on a wrong track, the better. Especially when the turning was so delightfully ridiculous!