that?" asked the Mahatma.

I shook my head.

"Veiled women, walking!"

"You mean the princesses have come?"

"A few, and their attendants."

"How many princesses?"

"Oh, not more than twenty. But each will bring at the least twenty
attendants, and perhaps a score of friends, each of whom in turn will
have her own attendants. And only the princesses and their friends will
enter the audience hall, which, however, will be surrounded by the
attendants, whose business it will be to see that no stranger, and above
all no male shall see or overhear."

"And if they were to catch Athelstan King up there?"

"That would be his last and least pleasant experience in this world!"

That was easy enough to believe. I had just had an experience of what
those palace women could do.

"She, who learned our secrets, will take care that none shall play that
trick on _her_," the Mahatma went on confidently. "These women will use
the audience hall she lent to us. Their plan is to control the new
movement in India, and their strength consists in secrecy. They will
take all precautions."

"Do you mean to tell me," I demanded, "that as you sit here now you are
impotent? Can't you work any of your tricks?"

"Those are not tricks, my friend, they are sciences. Can your Western
scientists perform to order without their right environment and
preparations?"

"Then you can't break that door down, or turn loose any magnetic force?"

"You speak like a superstitious fool," he retorted calmly. "The answer
is no."

"That," said I, "is all that I was driving at. Do you see this?" And I
held my right fist sufficiently close to his nose to call urgent
attention to it. "Tell me just what transpired between you and King from
the time when you disappeared out there in the courtyard until you came
in here alone!"

"No beating in the world could make me say a word," he answered calmly.
"You would only feel horribly ashamed."

I believed him, and sat still, he looking at me in a sort of way in
which a connoisseur studies a picture with his eyelids a little lowered.

"Nevertheless," he went on presently, "I observe that I have misjudged
you in some respects. You are a man of violent temper, which is cave-man
foolishness; yet you have prevailing judgment, which is the beginning of
civilization. There is no reason why I should not tell you what you
desire to know, even though it will do you no good."

"I listen," I answered, trying to achieve