"I have settled it. Before dawn to-morrow--not this dawn, that is too nigh on us now--but the next, thou shalt let me into the garden. Thou knowest the little balcony which was not lit up? I will stay there, waiting, till she come for an early walk among the flowers. That can be managed. Then, if the coast is clear, we can meet and talk. If not, there is no harm done, for I can slip into the stream and swim back. That will be best, since it is not possible by day, and at night the _mems_ do not receive visitors, as we do, without reproach." Roshan's knowledge of etiquette was sound, yet at that very moment Laila, ablaze with gold and jewels, was meeting her lover's eyes with a happy laugh. "What's in a dress?" she paraphrased, "it is no part of me!" Was it not? Never had Vincent seen her look like this; so absolutely desirable, so perfectly adorable. He caught her in his arms and kissed her. The heavy scent upon her dress assailed him. She looked up into his eyes and laughed. "_But trust me, gentleman, I'll prove more true_," she whispered, "_than those who have more cunning to be strange_." "Juliet!" he whispered back, lost in his own mad passion. "Juliet!" Their gold-shod feet were upon the golden stairs; the gates of Paradise were before them. CHAPTER XVII THE POOL OF IMMORTALITY "_Hârâ! Hârî! Hârî! Hârâ!_" The cry was incessant now, for there was a glint of light in the east; and the hosts of pilgrims to the 'Cradle of the Gods' were cramming, almost to solidity, each street and alley in Eshwara which could be said, by however long and tortuous a detour, to give access to that small tank where, at dawn, the miraculous waters of cleansing would rise, as they always did on this, the great Day of Atonement. In the sea of slightly upturned faces, upturned in the vain hope of seeing over the heads of those in front, the most noticeable thing was the expression of mingled eagerness and patience. And this was most noticeable in those who stood nearest to the bamboo railing which had been erected (in a square some four feet from the first step downwards) as a precaution against a dangerous rush on all sides; and in consequence, a dangerous crush on those steep steps. The only entrance to them, therefore, was by a sort of double sheep-pen at the end nearest the town, by means of which, when the time came, some fifty bathers would be admitted to the railed square from the inner pen, their places in which would be taken by the fifty in the outer one; their places, in turn, being filled by fifty from the general crowd. By which double check no more than fifty could stand at one time with no barrier between their mortality and immortality! The railing itself was guarded every two yards by a yellow-legged constable, and at the sheep-pens stood the two European police-officers in whose hands the peace and order of the vast crowd lay. Their assistant stood at the