When she had plaited her hair into two long braids, she slipped into a dressing-gown and pattered into her brother's room in bedroom sandals.
"Alan," she said, slipping her arms about his neck, "it's so wonderful to be with you! Why, just think, two months ago I was teaching music in Bayou Latouche!"
"To-morrow we'll ramble about the city, through the Fort and the bazaars," he told her. "And the next day--to Lahore."
"I always think of Lahore with a picture of _Kim_ sitting on '_Zam-zammah_'."
He smiled. "Then to Peshawar and the Khyber. I've an old friend at Ali Masjid Fort and he's promised to take us through the Pass."
Then he rose, picked her up bodily and carried her into her room, placing her upon the bed.
He kissed her, turned out the light and returned to his room.
Dana slipped out of her dressing-gown; flung it across the foot of the bed; dropped her slippers upon the floor. Then she lay back upon the pillows, watching the moonlight that streamed in through the open casement.
The wide-flung windows yielded a view of the sky and the white Indian stars. In her fancy she likened them to a string of jewels. Jewels. That word brought to her mind a picture of the looted treasures of which Alan had told her. Gems. What fascinating things! Jewels of rajahs and maharajahs, the pomp and rust of pagan rulers! Diamonds stripped from idols' eyes, and rubies and sapphires pillaged from the vaults of ancient temples! She had heard stories of the pearl fisheries of Ceylon where stones were stolen and hidden in cobras, even in human bodies.... India, mother of intrigue. She shivered.
She could not forget the copy of the Pearl Scarf of Indore. It haunted her.... Pearls.... Chavigny, a thief of international notoriety.... Alan's pen was scratching steadily on in the next room. The odor of tobacco was comforting. It made her forget the jewels of Ind; conjured in her mind a picture of the great, pillared house at Bayou Latouche. And she was still thinking of Bayou Latouche, and hearing faintly the _scratch-scratch_ of the pen, when she fell asleep.
Dana awakened with a start. Involuntarily she sat up in bed, staring drowsily about the room. It was buried in dusk. The moonlight, floating through the casement, crusted the floor with a band of pearl. As full consciousness wiped the threads of sleep from her brain, she wondered what had caused her sudden awakening. No noise, for silence shut down like a lid, made more intense by the sighing of trees beyond the stone terrace. The sounds of a clock on the dressing-table seemed to stitch the hush.