hat I should use all the spells of my art in
her favour, so as to obtain for her from God the gift of a son.

"Well, after a time an unexpected thing happened. Mirza Shah was absent
from his home--gone on a full week's journey, engaged in the settling of
some dispute on the confines of his territory. To me there came one
afternoon the sultana, attended by one of her women--the most trusted
one, I knew, for both were from the same country, near to Amritsar,
where the famous rugs are woven. So much I had learned, and this further
I also knew, that by birth the sultana was a Hindu, although on being
wed to her lord as a little girl, she had of course embraced the true
faith of Islam, in so far as it matters for a woman to have any religion
at all.

"It was the female attendant who spoke to me, her mistress listening in
silence. But the questions came so readily that it was clear the lesson
had been well rehearsed by the twain.

"'Astrologer,' she began, 'can you swear on the Koran that the stars
speak truth?'

"'That I can swear,' I replied, with due dignity and respect for myself
and my profession.

"'Can the stars bring about the wishes of man or of woman?'

"'Nay, that I do not declare. They rule the lives of men and women only
in so far as their movements forecast the future. If we can read the
stars aright, we may gain foreknowledge of events destined to happen.
For what is written in the scroll of fate cannot be changed. From kismet
there is no escape."

"'Then tell me this, O astrologer, from your stars: is my noble lady
here ever going to have a child, a son?'

"'That question I cannot answer. Unless I have the horoscope of her
highness, cast by skilled hands at the time of her birth, I cannot tell
which planet rules her destiny.'

"'Alas, we knew not these things among my people down in Amritsar,' I
heard my lady murmur.

"'Bah!' exclaimed the serving woman contemptuously. She had flung open
her veil, unashamed as are women of her station that I, not her brother
or her husband, should gaze upon her face. It was a pleasant enough face
of a woman of five-and-twenty years of age; yet, methought, as I looked
into it now, that there was unseemly boldness in her eye and even
something of wanton abandonment in her manner.

"'Bah! If your stars cannot get us what we wish, what good are they?
Better pray at a Hindu shrine to Krishna, god of love revels, than waste
time in consulting a Moslem astrologer. That