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By Root 780 0

of those who Truly Understand” (capital T, capital U). “And this is true even when all things seem to conspire against us—même dans le désastre. You understand French, of course, Mr. Farnaby?” Will nodded. “It often comes to me more easily than my own native tongue, or English or Palanese. After so many years in Switzerland,” she explained, “first at school. And again, later on, when my poor baby’s health was so precarious” (she patted Murugan’s bare arm) “and we had to go and live in the mountains. Which illustrates what I was saying about Providence always being on our side. When they told me that my little boy was on the brink of consumption, I forgot everything I’d ever learnt. I was mad with fear and anguish, I was indignant against God for having allowed such a thing to happen. What Utter Blindness! My baby got well, and those years among the Eternal Snows were the happiest of our lives—weren’t they, darling?”

“The happiest of our lives,” the boy agreed, with what almost sounded like complete sincerity.

The Rani smiled triumphantly, pouted her full red lips, and with a faint smack parted them again in a long-distance kiss. “So you see, my dear Farnaby,” she went on, “you see. It’s really self-evident. Nothing happens by Accident. There’s a Great Plan, and within the Great Plan innumerable little plans. A little plan for each and every one of us.”

“Quite,” said Will politely. “Quite.”

“There was a time,” the Rani continued, “when I knew it only with my intellect. Now I know it with my heart. I really…” she paused for an instant to prepare for the utterance of the mystic majuscule, “Understand.”

“Psychic as hell.” Will remembered what Joe Aldehyde had said of her. And surely that lifelong frequenter of séances should know.

“I take it, ma’am,” he said, “that you’re naturally psychic.”

“From birth,” she admitted. “But also and above all by training. Training, needless to say, in Something Else.”

“Something else?”

“In the life of the Spirit. As one advances along the Path, all the sidhis, all the psychic gifts and miraculous powers, develop spontaneously.”

“Is that so?”

“My mother,” Murugan proudly assured him, “can do the most fantastic things.”

“N’exagérons pas, chéri.”

“But it’s the truth,” Murugan insisted.

“A truth,” the Ambassador put in, “which I can confirm. And I confirm it,” he added, smiling at his own expense, “with a certain reluctance. As a lifelong skeptic about these things, I don’t like to see the impossible happening. But I have an unfortunate weakness for honesty. And when the impossible actually does happen, before my eyes, I’m compelled malgré moi to bear witness to the fact. Her Highness does do the most fantastic things.”

“Well, if you like to put it that way,” said the Rani, beaming with pleasure. “But never forget, Bahu, never forget. Miracles are of absolutely no importance. What’s important is the Other Thing—the Thing one comes to at the end of the Path.”

“After the Fourth Initiation,” Murugan specified. “My mother…”

“Darling!” The Rani had raised a finger to her lips. “These are things one doesn’t talk about.”

“I’m sorry,” said the boy. There was a long and pregnant silence.

The Rani closed her eyes, and Mr. Bahu, letting fall his monocle, reverentially followed suit and became the image of Savonarola in silent prayer. What was going on behind that austere, that almost fleshless mask of recollectedness? Will looked and wondered.

“May I ask,” he said at last, “how you first came, ma’am, to find the Path?”

For a second or two the Rani said nothing, merely sat there with her eyes shut, smiling her Buddha smile of mysterious bliss. “Providence found it for me,” she answered at last.

“Quite, quite. But there must have been an occasion, a place, a human instrument.”

“I’ll tell you.” The lids fluttered apart and once again he found himself under the bright unswerving glare of those protuberant eyes of hers.

The place had been Lausanne; the time, the first year of her Swiss education; the chosen instrument, darling little Mme Buloz. Darling little Mme Buloz was the wife of