Samad settled his wineglass on the carpet with a sigh of resignation. "You've heard nothing I have said. I am telling you it would be best for you to forget about your 'mission.' Your destiny is no longer in your hands. But if you will open your heart, you will find it has riches to compensate you manyfold. Still, they can be yours only if you can know love. But now, I fear, the only love you know is self-love, ambition. You have not yet understood it is empty as mirror. _"The world is but a waking dream, The eye of heart sees clear. The garden of this tempting world, Is wrought of sand and tear." _ Hawksworth shifted and stared about the room. It was darker now but several men had entered. Few of them seemed to understand Samad's Turki. "So what do I do now?" "Stay with us for a while. Learn to know yourself." Samad rose and stepped off the dais. "Perhaps then you will at last find what you want." He motioned for Hawksworth to walk with him to the balcony. Across the courtyard a single lamp burned in the turret of one of the buildings. "Tonight must be remembered as a dream, my English. And like a dream, it is to be recalled on waking as mere light and shadow." He turned and led Hawksworth to the door. The men stood aside for them. "And now I bid you farewell. Others will attend you." Hawksworth walked into the marble corridor. Standing in the half-light, her face warm in the glow of a lamp, was . . . Shirin. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The night sky above the courtyard was afire, an overturned jewel box strewn about an ivory moon. They passed through a gateway of carved columns and ornate brackets, into a smaller plaza. The mosque was left behind: around them low were empty pavilions, several stories high, decorated with whimsical carvings, railings, cornices. Now they were alone in the abandoned palace, surrounded by silence and moonlight. Only then did she speak, her voice opening through the stillness. "I promised to think of you, and I have, more than you can know. Tonight I want to share this with you. The private palace of the Great Akman. The most beautiful place in all India." She paused and pointed to a wide marble pond in the middle of the plaza. In its center was a platform, surrounded by a railing and joined to the banks by delicate bridges. "They say when Akman's court musician, the revered Tansen, sat there and sang a raga for the rainy season, the clouds themselves would come to listen, and bless the earth with their tears. Once all this was covered by one magnificent canopy. Tonight we have only the stars." "How did you arrange this?" He still was lost in astonishment. "Don't ask me to tell you now. Can we just share this moment?"