They knew nothing about my clothes, or the suitcase that King and I shared between us and that, according to Yasmini, had been carried by her orders to the palace.

The words "King" and "Mahatma" seemed to convey no meaning to them.

They made it perfectly obvious that they suspected me of being mad.
I began to suspect myself of the same thing! Feeling as sleepy as I did, it was not unreasonable to suspect myself at any rate of dreaming; yet I had sufficient power of reasoning left to argue that if those were dream-women they would give way in front of me.

So I stepped straight forward, and they no more gave way than a she-bear will if you call on her when she is nursing cubs.

Two more women stepped out from behind the curtains with long slithery daggers in their hands, and somehow I was not minded to test whether those were dream-daggers or not.
It was a puzzle to know what to do.