her. For there, in an alcove, stood Krishna's casket. In larger
boxes, lined with sandalwood, her many-tinted silks and saris lay
lovingly folded. Another casket held her jewels, and arranged on a row
of shelves stood her dainty array of shoes--gold and silver and pale
brocades: an intimate touch that pierced his heart.

Near the Krishna alcove, hung a portrait he had not seen: a thing of
fragile, almost unearthly beauty, painted when her husband came
home--and realised....

An aching lump in Roy's throat cut like a knife; but his father's remark
put him on his mettle. And, the next instant, he saw....

"_Dad!_" he breathed, in awed amazement.

For there, on the small round table stood a model in dull red clay:
unmistakably, unbelievably--the rock fortress of Chitor: the walls
scarped and bastioned; Khumba Rana's tower; and the City itself--no
ruin, but a miniature presentment of Chitor, as she might have been in
her day of ancient glory, as Roy had been dimly aware of her in the
course of his own amazing ride. Temples, palaces, huddled houses--not
detailed, but skilfully suggested--stirred the old thrill in his veins,
the old certainty that he knew....

"Well----?" asked Sir Nevil, whose eyes had not left his face.

"_Well!_" echoed Roy, emerging from his trance of wonder. "I'm
dumfounded. A few mistakes, here and there; but--as a whole ... Dad--how
in the world ... could you know?"

"I don't know. I hoped you would. I ... saw it clearly, just like
that----"

"How? In a dream?"

"I suppose so. I couldn't swear, in a court of law, that I was awake. It
happened--one evening, as I lay there, on her couch--remembering ...
going back over things. And suddenly, out of the darkness,
blossomed--that. Asleep or awake, my mind was alert enough to seize and
hold the impression, without a glimmer of surprise ... _till_ I came to,
or woke up--which you will. Then my normal, sceptical self didn't know
what to make of it. I've always dismissed that sort of thing as mere
brain-trickery. But--a vivid, personal experience makes it ... not so
easy. Of course, from reading and a few old photographs, I knew it was
Chitor: and my chief concern was to record the vision in its first
freshness. For three days I worked at it: only emerging now and then to
snatch a meal. I began with those and that----"

He indicated a set of rough sketches and an impression in oils; a ghost
of a city full of suggested beauty and mystery. "No joke,