Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/127

Rh the grimness relaxes—you get the very romance of beauty—lace work in marble, water palaces and walled gardens. Thus at Oodeypore, at the foot of that wonderful rock-hung fortress of the King who was saved by his Nurse, is the Suggun Niwas, sitting like a lotus flower on its broad green leaf—a series of marble lattices and balconies and exquisite turrets, built round the quiet peace of a water garden of fruit trees, gorgeous study in orange and green, or the potpourri of the flower garden of my Lady Rosebody. Or there again, is the Queen of Cities, the Universal Mother standing to greet you at the mouth of a great mountain gorge. The road winds higher and higher, the gates of the outer world close upon you; you are at home here in the peace place of “the heart’s true ease,” beside the lake of pink mimosa and sweet-scented thyme. …

You walk in the dead cities—the walls have outlived the rivalry of Kings—the white palaces glitter on the hill tops, and the priceless mosaies still hide in the niches. … The fierce upstanding men of the divided beard, their swords girt upon their loins, are fighters still.