Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1909-11-21

teer writes You'n see when you meet
him.
DO you take much interest in poll
tics?''
"No more than the everyday English
woman; it's one of our staples of CONVEX
sation when we've exhausted the
weather, you know. But I'm not in the
least advanced, II that's what you mean:
l hunger after fashion papers and spend
more time than I ought devouring home
made trash imported in paper covers. !
only feel what l feel by instinct-as
said awhile ago.
Perhaps if he had known less about the
girl he would have attached less dmpor-
lance to her statements. AS it was. she
impressed him profoundly. He pondered
her words deeply, storing them In his
spoken in the same manner-one for
whose insight into the ways Of the native
he had intense respect.
AS the slow afternoon dragged out Its
blazing hours their spirits langu!shed.
and they fell silent, full weary and list
less. Toward the last quarter OF the
journey their road forsook the spacious
haggard plain and again entered a hiliy
country, but this time one wherein there
was no lack either Of water or Of life
green and fertile land parceled into
farms and dotted with villages.
Night overlook the tonga when 1t was
close upon Kuttarpur, swooping down
upon the world like blanket of dark
of ponies was being hftched in. The sun
dipped behind the ericircling hills; the
west blazed with the lambert flame or
fire-opal: the wonderful translucent blue
Of the sky shaded suddenly to deep pur-
pie lanced by great shafts of mauve and
amethyst light, and in the east stars pop
ped out; the hills shone like huge. crude
gems-sapphire, jade. jasper. malachite,
chalcedony-their valleys swimming with
mists of mother of-pearl. And it
was night the hills dark and still, the
sky deeper purple and Opaque. the
rudy fires of wayfarers on the roadside
ping clear and bright.
With fresh ponies the tonga took the
road with wild initial rush soon to be
moderated, when it began to climb the
last steep grade to the pass that gives
access to Kuttarpur from the south. For
an hour the road toiled up and ever up
ward; steep cliffs of rock crowded it,
threatening to push it over into black
abysses, or to choke it off between tower
ing formidable walls. 1t swerved sud
denly into a broad, clear space. The
tonga paused Voluntarily Ram Nath
spoke for almost the first time since
morning.
''Kuttarpur," he said. with wave Of
his whip.
Aloof austere and naughty. the City
of Swords sits in the mouth OF ravine
so narrow that wall no more than a
hundred yards in length is sufficient to
seal its southerly approach. Beneath
this wall, to one side of the city gate,
river flows from the lake that is Kut-
tarpur's chiefest beauty. Within. null
titude of dwellings huddles. all 1nterpene-
trated by streets and backways so strait
ened and sinuouS as scarcely to permit
the passage Of an elephant from the Ma
harana's herd; congeSted in the bottom of
the valley, the houses climb tier upon
tier the thanking hillsides. until their top
most roofs threaten even the supremacy
of that miracle in white marble, the Raj
Mahal.
Northward the palace of Khandawars
kings stands, exquisite, rare and marvel
Gus. unlike any other building in the
world. White. all white, from the lake
that washes it's lowest walls to the cren-
ellated rim of it's highest roof. it sweeps
upward in breath-taking steps and wide
terraces to the crest of the western hill,
into which 1t burrows. from which it
springs: a vast enigma propounded in
white marble without note of color save
where the foliage of a hidden garden
peeps over the edge Of jealous screen
"a hundred imposing mansions merged
into ono monstrous and imperial maze.
Impregnable in the old days, before can
non were brought to India. kuttarpur
lives today remote. unfriendly, inhospit-
able. Within its walls there Is no room
for many visitors; they who come in
numbers, therefore, must perforce camp
down before the gates
Now figure the city to yourself, seeing
it Sophia was later to see 1t in the
light of day; then drench 1t with blue In
dian night and stud 1t with a myriad
eyes of fire-lamps. torches candles, blue
white electric ares. lights running up and
down both hillsides and fringing the very
star-sheeted skies clustering and diverg-
ing In vast bewildering. inconsequent de-
signs picking out the walls and main
thoroughfares, shining through colored
globes upon the palace terraces. glimmer-
ing mysteriously from isolate windows
and balconies, and add to these the softly
Illuminated walls of a hundred silken
state marques and a thousand meaner
canvas tents arrayed south of the city.
And that is kuttarpur as it first
revealed itself to Amber and Sophia Far
relI
But for moment were they permitted
to gaze in wonderment: Ram Nath had
little patience. When he chose to he ap-
piled his whip. and the ponies stretched
out. the tonga plunginE on their heels