Even the roof was so uneven, and so subdivided by traced and deep-carved walls and ramparts, that a sentry posted at one end could not have seen the next man to him, perhaps some twenty feet away.

Building had been piled on building--other buildings had been added end to end and crisscrosswise--and each extension had been walled in as new centuries saw new additions, until the many acres were a maze of bricks and stone and fountain-decorated gardens that no lifelong palace denizen could have learned to know in their entirety.
Within--one story up above the courtyard din--in a spacious, richly decorated room that gave on to a gorgeous roof-garden, the Maharajah sat and let himself be fanned by women, who were purchasable for perhaps a tenth of what any of the fans had cost.

Another woman, younger than the rest, played wild minor music to him on an instrument not much unlike a flute; they were melancholy notes--beautiful--but sad enough to sow pessimism's seed in any one who listened.
His divan--carved, inlaid, and gilded--faced the wide, awning-hung opening to the garden.

Round him on all three sides was a carved stone screen through whose interstices came rustlings and whisperings that told of the hidden life which sees and is not seen.

The women with the fans and flute were mere court accessories; the real nerves of Asia--the veiled intriguers whom none may know but whose secret power any man may feel--could be heard like caged birds crowding on their perches.
Now and then glass bracelets tinkled from behind the screen; ever and again the music stopped, until another girl appeared to play another melancholy air.