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January, 1942
F I L M I X D I A
yet I love the man who has created such beauty!"
A TRYST IX THE XIGHT
That night, when the world slept, a figure cloaked from head to foot in a dark burqa stole from the women's quarters of the palace and, keeping to the shadows, slipped quickly across the moonlit courtyard and through the gardens to the old library by the Elephant Gate.
It halted, that little flitting figure, by the sculptor's door. There was a light in the studio; Ustad Isa worked late. Peering through the tracery of the window, Naseem beheld him in the lamplight — a tall man, no longer young, even as Assad
Khan had said, but grave and pleasant of face.
She knocked softly and urgently.
He looked up bewildered. She knocked again; he set down his pen and opened the door, regarding her with some surprise.
"Let me in quickly lest any see me," whispered Naseem.
He conducted her into his studio. She looked about her with eager interest through the burqa 's gauze eyepieces.
"Who are you, lady, and what brings you here at this hour?" asked Ustad Isa.
"I am one of the Empress's maidsof-honour," said Naseem.
He started at her in amazement.
"But you ought not to be here!" he exclaimed.
"No. That was why I came in secret", said Naseem. He could not see her face beneath the all-enveloping burqa. but her voice was low and very sweet. "To-day the screen you gave the Emperor was set up in our zanana. I have looked at it ever since with such wonder and rapture at its beauty that I can think of nothing else; and I have come to offer my homage to such a master as you."
Ustad Isa the sculptor regarded her veiled figure for a moment in silence.
"Lady," he said at length, "This is a great honour you have done me."
"I had to come," said Naseem. "Nothing would do but that I must tell you with my own lips; and this was the only way."
"Alone and at night?" said Ustad Isa. "Were you not afraid?"
"My desire was greater than my fear," said Naseem simply. "Now that I am here. Master, will you not show me more of your work?"
Many of the great of the land had made that request before; but never had it given Ustad Isa such pleasure.
Strangely, in that strange hour, friendship grew between them. He was amazed to find how quickly the time sped by.
"I must go," Naseem said at last.
"I will see you safely back to the palace," said Ustad Isa.
"No, No; none must guess that I have been out. Two figures would assuredly be seen, whereas alone I can slip unobserved from shadow to shadow," said Naseem.
* I grieve to let you go," said Ustad Isa.
"It may be that we shall meet again."
"I wish I could think so. But how? You must not take such a risk again; and I may not set foot in the zanana, nor see your face — "
"That at least vou shall do." said Naseem.
'Tell whom you will", said Naseem, "nothing in the world ever make me marry you now?'
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