Ratnadatta signed to her to look through it, and when her eyes came close to the wire she found that these secret observation posts gave an excellent view of a large and lofty room. She guessed that at one time it had probably been a banqueting hall, and the curious shaped room in which she was sitting a minstrels' gallery, opening into it. But now the former had more the appearance of a chapel. At its far end, covered with a broad strip of blood-red silk, was a long raised slab, that looked as though it might be used as an altar. Beyond it stood a great carved throne of ebony, and behind that, tall red silk curtains having embroidered upon them in gold a design of two drop-shaped sections with curved tails interlocking to form a circle, which, although Mary did not know it, was the Yin and the Yang - the Eastern symbol for the male and female principles. In the body of the hall, to either side of a central aisle, instead of pews were ranged a dozen or more divans plentifully stocked with cushions of many colours, and from somewhere out of sight came the sounds of a band tuning up.

Down in the hall some twenty people were already assembled, and were being joined by others. They were coming in by a door that Mary could not see, as it was below the balcony in which she was sitting, but just within her range of vision there was a large table on which stood an array of bottles and glasses; and each newcomer helped himself to a drink from it before joining the earlier arrivals.

From the groups down below there came up a gentle murmur of conversation and from their behaviour they might have been guests at a perfectly respectable cocktail party. But one glance was enough to see that this gathering was far from being anything of that kind. Everyone present was wearing a small black satin mask, a narrow black velvet garter below the left knee and silver sandals, but little else. They had on only long cloaks of transparent veiling, sparsely decorated with silver suns, moons or signs of the Zodiac; so that the bodies of all of them were almost as fully revealed as if they had been naked. The party consisted of roughly equal numbers of both sexes; among the women there was an enormously fat negress and a young Chinese girl; among the men, two negroes, one of whom had white hair, an Indian and two who looked like Japanese.