They no longer seemed to be flesh and blood women possessed of weight and other limitations; their footfall was hardly audible, and you could not hear them breathe at all.

They were like living shadows, and they danced the way the shadows of the branches do on a jungle clearing when a light breeze makes the trees laugh.
It had some sort of mystic meaning no doubt, although I did not understand it; but what I did understand was that the whole arrangement was designed to produce a sort of mesmerism in the beholder.
However, school yourself to live alone and think alone for a quarter of a century or so, meeting people only as man to man instead of like a sheep among a flock of sheep, and you become immune to that sort of thing.
The Princess Yasmini seemed to realize that neither King nor I were being drawn into the net of dreaminess that those trained women of hers were weaving.
"Watch!" said Yasmini suddenly.

And then we saw what very few men have been priviliged to see.
She joined the dance; and you knew then who had taught those women.
Theirs had been after all a mere interpretation: of her vision.

Hers was the vision itself.
She was _It_--the thing itself--no more an interpretation than anything in nature is.

Yasmini became India--India's heart; and I suppose that if King and I had understood her we would have been swept into her vortex, as it were, like drops of water into an ocean.
She was unrestrained by any need, or even willingness to explain herself.