Therefore, as he sat crouched up in the corner of a frail lady's reception room, fingering a lute which he had found there, and trilling softly of 'oughts' and 'naughts' while she retailed the latest lies to the shifting audience which came and went up and down the steep musk-scented stairs, he was at once a thing dreadful, a thing pathetic. For his keen face, seen by the smoking oil lamps set high in a brass trefoil before the mistress of the house, was alight with a sensuous spirituality, and his lean figure, so listless in its lounge, was instinct with that power of energy, of spring, that shows even in a sleeping tiger. 'Lo, thou in the corner!' came the narrator's voice; 'hold thy peace. What are thy "oughts" and "naughts" to us of the bazaar? Take them to thy virtuous beauties who leave messages for thee at Dilarâm's--at Dilarâm's forsooth! an odd "_post-arffis_"[16] for virtue! And so, my masters,' she went on, 'the _daghdars_[17]--there were five of them--carried the woman off by force, and----' Lateefa was not one of the breathless listeners. He was winking elaborately at the buxom assistant who was handing round the sherbets, and asking irresponsibly, 'Didst leave a message for me at Dilarâm's, beloved?' 'Not I, fool!' she giggled; 'thou must be drunk indeed to think virtue fits me. Yet it is true. One such _did_ come when I was at Dilarâm's with her----' She nodded to the speaker--who, having reached her climax, was becoming dramatic, the light before her making her face all eyes and lips--'An old body--out on thee for thy bad taste, Lateef! And she says, says she, "Tell Lateef of the house of the Nawâb that it is well with us in the prison--that we want no service." See you, friends? not even his! Nay, take it not to heart, beloved! there be others less unkind.' But Lateefa had risen with a sudden sense of something beyond his present freedom; that freedom from truth, clothes, kite-making, above all things, from the methods of the police! And that something was Auntie Khôjee. For the messenger, he felt, could have been no one else. Why had she come to say it was well with her? Had they made her do so? And if so, what had they been doing to those helpless women? What they _could_ have done, had they dared, Lateefa knew only too well; and his brain was too confused to remember that _had_ they dared, they would scarcely have bidden him go back to his workshop in the old palace. His feet were as confused as his brain, but, in or out of the gutter, they steered him pretty straight for the big iron-studded door with the little wicket in it beneath the _naubat khana_. 'Khôjee!' he called cautiously, rattling at the wicket; for it was barred, as usual, at night. There was no answer. He raised his voice--'Auntie Khôjee, it is Lateef! Rise, sister, and let me in.'