Chang smiled after her and then, with a touch of personal triumph, upon Conway. “You are pleased?” he queried.
“Who is she?” asked Mallinson, before Conway could reply.
“Her name is Lo-Tsen. She has much skill with Western keyboard music. Like myself, she has not yet attained the full initiation.”
“I should think not, indeed!” exclaimed Miss Brinklow. “She looks hardly more than a child. So you have women lamas, then?”
“There are no sex distinctions among us.”
“Extraordinary business, this lamahood of yours,” Mallinson commented loftily, after a pause. The rest of the tea-drinking proceeded without conversation; echoes of the harpsichord seemed still in the air, imposing a strange spell. Presently, leading the departure from the pavilion, Chang ventured to hope that the tour had been enjoyable. Conway, replying for the others, seesawed with the customary courtesies. Chang then assured them of his own equal enjoyment, and hoped they would consider the resources of the music room and library wholly at their disposal throughout their stay. Conway, with some sincerity, thanked him again. “But what about the lamas?” he added. “Don’t they ever want to use them?”
“They yield place with much gladness to their honored guests.”
“Well, that’s what I call real handsome,” said Barnard. “And what’s more, it shows that the lamas do really know we exist. That’s a step forward, anyhow, makes me feel much more at home. You’ve certainly got a swell outfit here, Chang, and that little girl of yours plays the pi-anno very nicely. How old would she be, I wonder?”
“I am afraid I cannot tell you.”
Barnard laughed. “You don’t give away secrets about a lady’s age, is that it?”
“Precisely,” answered Chang with a faintly shadowing smile.
That evening, after dinner, Conway made occasion to leave the others and stroll out into the calm, moon-washed courtyards. Shangri-La was lovely then, touched with the mystery that lies at the core of all loveliness. The air was cold and still; the mighty spire of Karakal looked nearer, much nearer than by daylight. Conway was physically happy, emotionally satisfied, and mentally at ease; but in his intellect, which was not quite the same thing as mind, there was a little stir. He was puzzled. The line of secrecy that he had begun to map out grew sharper, but only to reveal an inscrutable background. The whole amazing series of events that had happened to him and his three chance companions swung now into a sort of focus; he could not yet understand them, but he believed they were somehow to be understood.
Passing along a cloister, he reached the terrace leaning over the valley. The scent of tuberose assailed him, full of delicate associations; in China it was called “the smell of moonlight.” He thought whimsically that if moonlight had a sound also, it might well be the Rameau gavotte he had heard so recently; and that set him thinking of the little Manchu. It had not occurred to him to picture women at Shangri-La; one did not associate their presence with the general practice of monasticism. Still, he reflected, it might not be a disagreeable innovation; indeed, a female harpsichordist might be an asset to any community that permitted itself to be (in Chang’s words) “moderately heretical.”