Whether it was his loving
description, or whether it was because she was calmer, she could not say,
but the place impressed her with its stately magnificence as it had not
done before.
"The ages seem to hang like ghosts in the atmosphere," she told her
companion, in a hushed undertone.
He assented, and the dreamer's look which had haunted his eyes for
twenty-five years crept back into its place.
"Who knows what unseen world surrounds us?" he said quietly.
They had already left the first court behind them and passed the Sacred
Pool, a placid, untroubled mirror for the overhanging trees and towering
minarets. There they had paused a moment, watching their own reflections
which the warm evening sunshine cast on to the smooth surface. Then they
had moved on, and now stood before the entrance of the Holy of Holies.
Beatrice drew back with a gesture of alarm. A tall, white-clad figure had
suddenly stepped out of the shadowy portal and stood erect and
threatening, one hand raised as though to forbid their entrance. Long
afterward, Beatrice remembered the withered face, and always with a
shudder of unreasonable terror.
"Do not be afraid," Nehal Singh said. "He defends the entrance against
strangers. He will let you pass."
He went up to the old priest and spoke a few words in Hindustani, which
Beatrice did not understand. Immediately the Brahman stood aside, and
though his stern, piercing gaze never left her face, she felt that by some
means or other his animosity had been disarmed.
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