e more, and
the Lingam of Shiva, crowned with flowers, is the symbol in the little
shrine by the entrance. Surely in India, the gods are one and have no
jealousies among them--so swiftly do their glories merge the one into
the other.

"How all the Mogul Emperors loved running water," said Vanna. "I can see
them leaning over it in their carved pavilions with delicate dark faces
and pensive eyes beneath their turbans, lost in the endless reverie of
the East while liquid melody passes into their dream. It was the music
they best loved."

She was leading me into the royal garden below, where the young river
flows beneath the pavilion set above and across the rush of the water.

"I remember before I came to India," she went on, "there were
certain words and phrases that meant the whole East to me. It was an
enchantment. The first flash picture I had was Milton's--

'Dark faces with white silken turbans wreathed.'

and it still is. I have thought ever since that every man should wear a
turban. It dignifies the un-comeliest and it is quite curious to see how
many inches a man descends in the scale of beauty the moment he takes it
off and you see only the skull-cap about which they wind it. They wind
it with wonderful skill too. I have seen a man take eighteen yards of
muslin and throw it round his head with a few turns, and in five or six
minutes the beautiful folds were all in order and he looked like a king.
Some of the Gujars here wear black ones and they are very effective and
worth painting--the black folds and the sullen tempestuous black brows
underneath."

We sat in the pavilion for awhile looking down on the rushing water, and
she spoke of Akbar, the greatest of the Moguls, and spoke with a curious
personal touch, as I thought.

"I wish you would try to write a story of him--one on more human lines
than has been done yet. No one has accounted for the passionate quest
of truth that was the real secret of his life. Strange in an Oriental
despot if you think of it! It really can only be understood from the
Buddhist belief, which curiously seems to have been the only one he
neglected, that a mysterious Karma influenced all his thoughts. If I
tell you as a key-note for your story, that in a past life he had been a
Buddhist priest--one who had fallen away, would that in any way account
to you for attempts to recover the lost way? Try to think that out, and
to write the story, not as a Western mind sees it, but pu