Page:Between the twilights being studies of Indian women by one of themselves (IA betweentwilights00soraiala).pdf/135



T was a spacious roof-terrace—large even for the house of a King: for an earthquake had destroyed almost an entire story, and no one had troubled to do more through the years that followed than move away the débris.

So the Zenana had a whole wing of open spaces at the top of the landing, and here it was that we sat, under a sky that was like a pink opal, while the swallows and the yellow-beaked mainas, and crows, flew overhead to roost. Bats there were too—“devil’s mice”—flapping the sleep out of their wings: and now, a red-brown throated, red-brown coated brahmini-kite, to whom the women made prayerful salutation. A kingfisher had just flashed past, bright as the sea at noonday, bright even in that darkening light, and knowing the reverence of the Rajputni for the