It was evening. A sky of purest emerald, luminous, transparent, and divinely calm, stretched over the city of Damascus, that lies in its white glory, wrapped round by its mantle of foliage, in the heart of the burning desert-unhurt, cool, invulnerable in the jaws of the all-devouring desert sand. In the East, with the first cool breath of evening comes a spirit of rejoicing: the heat and burden of the day are over, and there is one hour of pure delight before the darkness. This hour had come to Damascus: the roses lifted their heads in the garden, the birds burst into joyous floods of song, and the trees waved and spread their branches to the little breeze that came rippling through the crystal air.

Almost on the confines of the city, where the belt of protecting verdure grows thin and the gaunt face of the desert presses against the city walls, rose the square, white dwelling of Ahmed Ali, and his garden was the largest and most beautiful of the city. High white walls enclosed it on every side, and from the broad, travelled highway that ran beside it the dusty and wearied wayfarer often lifted his eyes to the profusion of gay roses, the syringa, and star-eyed jasmine that tumbled jubilantly over the edge, and hung their scented wreaths far above his head. The tinkling of a fountain could be heard within, and the mad rapture of song from the birds in the evening, when the scent of the orange blossom stole softly out on the radiant golden air. On the other side of the garden was a grove of orange-trees. The rich, glossy, green foliage rose in dark masses above the high wall, and some inquisitive, encroaching boughs stretched over and occasionally dropped their golden fruit into Ahmed’s garden. On the inside of the old, moss-grown wall were numerous buttresses, and in these angles and corners, sheltered from any breeze, the roses and the small fruit-trees fairly rioted together, blending their masses of pink and white bloom.

On this evening, when the sky shone like one sheet of purest mother-of-pearl, green and rose and faint purple, the garden was very still; the only sound was the murmur of the falling water, the coo of some white doves in a pear-tree, and a very light step pacing on the tiny narrow path that wound its way round the whole garden amongst the rose-bushes and lemon-trees.

Dilama, the youngest of the ladies of the harem, was walking in the garden with her white veil thrown back and a smile on her small, red, curling lips. She stooped here and there to gather a flower whenever a bud or blossom of particular beauty caught her eye, and fastened now one against her thick brown hair, and now one or two upon the rich-embroidered muslin that covered the upper part of her bosom. She was intensely happy: in the spring at Damascus, at seventeen and in love, who would not be happy? The fires of youth and love and joy burned in her flesh and danced in her veins and shone in her eyes, and she sang and smiled to herself as she gathered the flowers. She was a Druze woman, and gifted with the wonderful beauty that Nature has showered on the women of Syria. Skins that the most perfect Saxon skin of milk and rose can scarcely rival are wedded to eyes of Eastern midnight and brown tresses filled with shining lights of red and gold. She had been born in the fierce, barren mountains lying behind Beirut, and at eight years old had drifted-part of the spoils of a raid-into the keeping of Ahmed Ali, the richest landowner and merchant of Damascus. He was a Turk, of pure Turkish blood, and with the large, generous heart and the kindly nature of the Turk. All the life that owed him allegiance, that was supported by his hand, was happy and well cared for-from the magnificent black horses, ignorant of whip and spur, that filled his stables, and the dogs that lay peacefully about in his palace, to the beauties of the harem, who tripped about gaily singing and laughing in their cool halls and shaded garden. Where the Turk rules there is usually peace, for his nature is pacific, and in the palace of Ahmed there was joy and peace and love and pleasure in abundance. There were seven ladies of the harem, including Dilama, and six of these were happy wives of Ahmed. Each had one or more sons, handsome, large-eyed, sedate little Mohammedans, who were being trained by Turkish mothers in all sorts of gentle ways and manners-in thought and care for others, in courtesy and kindness; and who were very different in their childish work and play from the brawling, selfish, cruel little monsters that European children of the same age mostly are. But Dilama was not yet Ahmed’s wife; she loved him most truly and deeply as an affectionate daughter. For who could not love Ahmed? There was a charm in his stately beauty of face and figure, in the kind musical voice, in the eyes so large and dark and gentle, that was irresistible. But to Dilama he was something far above her: her king, her lord indeed, for whom she would lay down life itself without question, but not the man to whom her ardent simple nature had turned for love. Ahmed had not sought her. When first she came to his palace she had been too young except for him to treat as a pretty child, and the relationship of father and daughter then established had never yet been broken in upon. And the light-hearted, sunny-natured Druze girl had taken life just as she found it, regarding herself as Ahmed’s daughter, and rejoicing in her home of love and beauty she ceased to remember that one day he would inevitably claim her as his wife, and that that day must be the beginning or the end of happiness just as she prepared for it. But she did not prepare for it, she ignored it: flitting like some golden butterfly through the pleasant hours, and growing fairer every day, so that the harem women looked at her with a little sinking of the heart yet no ill-will, and said amongst themselves, “Surely Ahmed must choose her soon.” But Ahmed loved at that time with his whole soul a Turkish woman, and she was to give him shortly a second child, and for fear of disturbing her peace of mind Ahmed remained in the Selamlik, and would not visit his other wives, nor send for Dilama, though his eyes, like the others, noted her growing beauty day by day.

“I will wait in patience,” he thought, looking out one morning at sunrise, and watching Dilama playing with the white doves on the basin edge of the fountain. “I will wait till Buldoula is well and strong again. She would fret now, and think I was forgetting her in a new love if I call Dilama to me yet. I will wait till her second son is born, and then in her joy and pride she will not be jealous of the new wife.”

So he waited, but in the game of love he that waits is ever the loser. That night, when the moon was rising over the white and deep green of Damascus, Dilama walked, humming to herself, in the garden, full of a great leaping desire, born of her youth and fine health and the breath of the May night, to love and be loved. Suddenly, when she came to the corner, under the drooping boughs of the grove without the garden, an orange fell, and, just escaping her head struck her heavily on her bosom. With a great shock she stood still, looking up, and there, on the summit of the high wall, amid the green boughs, was a man sitting, leaning over down towards her, with fiery eyes looking upon her from under a dark green turban.

“It is death to be here,” she whispered, her face pallid in the moonlight, “do not stay;” yet her whole being leapt up with hope that he would disobey. The man laughed softly.

“It is life to look on you,” he said merely, and to her terrified joy and horrified delight he slid down between the lemon-trees and the wall, and stood before her in the angle it made, where two buttresses jutting forward hid him from all view unless one stood directly opposite.

Dilama shook from head to foot; in one fierce, sweeping rush, love passed over and through her as she stood staring with wild dilated eyes on the form before her. Tall, tall as Ahmed, with all the grace and strength of youth, lithe and supple, with a straight-lined, dark-browed face above a stately throat, and dark kindling eyes, wells of living fire that called all her soul and heart and womanhood into life.

“I have often watched you walking in the garden,” he murmured, gently taking in his, one nerveless hand. “I come from your village in the hills, where you were taken from long ago. I am a Druze,” and he threw his head higher, as the stag of the forest throws his at the first note of the challenge. Dilama knew well that he was of her own people. Infant memories, instinctive, implanted consciousness told her this without the aid of Druze clothing, or the short, gay dagger thrust into his waist-sash.

“I think you are not yet the wife of Ahmed Ali?” he went on, as she simply trembled in silence, wave after wave of emotion passing through her, striking her heart and choking her voice. “Tell me?”

Dilama shook her head, and a triumphant smile curved the handsome lips before her.

“I knew it; you are mine,” he said, in reply, and, bending over her as she stood shrinking, on the verge of fainting, between terror and wonder and joy, he kissed her on the lips, not roughly-even gently-but with such a fire of life on his that it seemed to the girl, in the destruction of all her usual feelings, in the havoc of the new ones called in their place, that the actual moment of dissolution had come.

That had been some three weeks ago, and now, on this soft, pearly evening, she was waiting eagerly for the sky to deepen, and the light of the stars to sharpen, and the orange to fall over the wall. For the Druze had come many times, and no one had discovered the lovers, screened by masses of roses in the buttress-sheltered corner of the wall. In fact, for the last weeks no one had had time or thought for anything but Buldoula, who lay sick within the palace walls, and attendants waited anxiously or ran hither and thither on various errands, and Ahmed was in the depths of anxiety; and no one thought about Dilama or paid any attention to her, and she was radiantly happy and self-engrossed, and came and went between the garden and her own little chamber as she listed, undisturbed. And this evening, as usual, she slipped unobserved amongst the roses into the corner of the buttressed wall. A moment after the boughs overhead parted, and the lithe Druze dropped down noiselessly beside her. She put her gold braceleted arms round his strong brown neck, and pressed her silken-covered bosom hard against his rough cotton tunic. A great rush of rosy light flooded all the sky for some minutes, then began to pale softly before the approach of the lustrous purple dark.

In the palace a light behind one of the mushrabeared windows was extinguished; there was the sound of the scurry of feet, and then a long wail came out from the building, rending the pink-hued twilight.

“Buldoula is dead!” remarked Dilama simply, as the lovers crouched together between the wall and the roses. It meant nothing to her, enclosed in the happy warmth of her lover’s arms; death had no meaning for her yet, hardly seventeen years’ journey distant from birth, and full of all the sap and great leaping fires of life. Death was something so far away, so impossible to realise. It was but a word to her-a casket enclosing nothing. Yet the death of Buldoula was the embryo event in the womb of time from which was to develop the whole tragedy of her own life.

“Buldoula is dead,” she said again, carelessly, her rose-tipped fingers smoothing the black sweeping arch of the man’s brows. “Perhaps her son is dead also. Ahmed will be very grieved-she was going to bear her second son.”

“Little dove! I must take you away to the mountains soon,” said the Druze, clasping her tighter to him. “Soon,” he muttered again, stooping down to look under the rose-boughs to the white-faced house, now, with all its screened windows, dark. His words seemed irrelevant, yet they were not. He had a keen prescience that the death of the favourite of the harem might influence very quickly Dilama’s fate.

“Why not take me now, Murad? I want to see the mountains,” and she laid her little head, crowned by its masses of brown-gold hair, on his warm breast.

“The caravan does not start for two weeks more,” he answered thoughtfully. “We must wait for it. It would be madness to try to escape alone. We should be seen, noted, and tracked down. Think how Ahmed will look for his treasure when he finds it stolen! But if you are hidden in a bale of goods on a camel in the caravan, who will suspect, who will know that the Druze has taken you? The whole caravan of Druzes cannot be stopped because Ahmed has lost a wife! No, in the caravan, with all the rest, we are safe. There is no other way.”

There was silence while the twilight deepened in the garden, and the stars began to show above like flashing swords in the sky. In the languor of love that knows no fear and has no cares, that opiate of the soul, Dilama lay in his arms and sought his lips and eyes, and asked no more about caravans and journeys and mountains, drugged and heavy with love. In an hour when all was velvet blackness beneath the wall, they kissed farewell. He scaled the crumbling bricks, and regained the sheltering orange grove, and she walked slowly back, drawing smooth her filmy veil, towards the darkened palace.

Five days later at noontime, as Dilama was sitting in the garden playing with the tame white doves by the fountain, one of the black female slaves approached her. Dilama looked up questioningly, holding a dove to her bosom.

“The lord is sorrowing within for his dead wife and dead son. He has sent for you; go in, and lead him away from grief,” and the woman smiled and prostrated herself before Dilama, who shrank instinctively away like a frightened child. But there is only one law and one will in the harem, and she rose obediently, letting the dove go, and stood ready to follow the slave. That meaning smile on the woman’s face filled her with an intuitive, instinctive, undefined fear, and at the same instant there rushed over her the realisation of the great happiness that same smile would have brought her had there been no Murad, had she fled from that rose-filled corner on that first evening-had she, in a word, waited! This summons to the presence of their lord is what so many of the harem slaves pine and long for through weary months, and sometimes years. It came now to her, and it meant nothing but vague fear and dread. She followed the slave with unelastic steps, and her brain full of heavy thoughts; they passed the women’s apartments and went on to the Selamlik and to the room of Ahmed, that looked out with unscreened windows into the cool, deep green of the garden. The slave drew back at the door, holding a curtain aside for the girl to enter. She went forward, the curtain fell behind her, and she was alone with Ahmed.

He was sitting opposite on a low divan or couch, clothed from head to foot in a deep blue robe, and with a turban of the same colour twisted above his level brows-a kingly, majestic figure, and the girl’s heart beat and her eyelids fell as she crept slowly over the floor towards him. At his feet she sank to her knees, and would have put her forehead to the ground, but Ahmed bent forward, and clasping both her arms lifted her on to the couch beside him.

“And you are the Druze child, Dilama?” he said gently, and leaning a little back from her, surveyed her intently with dark lustrous eyes. The girl felt swooning with terror; before his gaze her very flesh seemed dissolving. It seemed as if her heart, her brain, with the image of Murad stamped on them, would be laid bare to those brilliant, searching eyes. What would he not know, suspect, find out? What would he ask? demand of her? She could not ask herself. Was this to be the end of his paternal relationship to her? the beginning of a new one? She dared not lift her eyes lest he should see their terror; the blood burnt in the surface of all her fair skin, as if red-hot irons were pressed to it. And Ahmed, gazing upon her with the pure noonday light, softened by the leafy screen without pouring over her, drank in her fair Syrian beauty with delight. The pale, rose-hued silken clothing she wore harmonised with the ivory and rose of her round arms and throat and cheeks, and threw up the masses of dark hair that fell beneath her veil to her slender waist. Ahmed very gently unbound the snowy garment from her head and stroked her hair lightly, watching the gold gleams in its ripples as his hand passed over them. He saw her dismay, confusion, even her terror, and noticed the quiver of her hands and the irregular leap of her bosom, but these did not dismay him. He was accustomed to be beloved even as he loved, and the women of the harem who came to him in fear left him with happy confidence. He affected now not to see her embarrassment, thinking it to be only that, and said quietly, “And you have been happy, Dilama, in my house?” The girl felt she must speak, though her throat seemed closed and her tongue nerveless.

“Very happy,” she faltered at last in a whisper.

“But you have been lonely, perhaps?” he asked. “Have the roses and doves in the garden been companions enough for you? Have you not been too much alone?”

In the heavy load of apprehension of intangible fear and horror that seemed stifling her, a madness of longing came over the girl to be free from her guilty secret, to have never known Murad. Now she could have looked up fearless, full of expectant joy! She could have loved this man; she knew it, now that she felt his love approaching her: hope was dying within her that ever again would he regard her simply as his daughter. She knew those tones of the voice, she had heard them from Murad in the garden, but here the voice was infinitely more refined, the sound of it exquisitely musical; and now, that love for her was in it, it told her a new secret, that she could have given love for love. She knew, though her eyelids were down, how beautiful the face was that bent over her: the straight, severe lines of it, the magnificent eyes and brows burnt through her lids. Ah, why had he waited so long, or she not waited longer?

Full of intolerable, irrepressible pain, she looked up at last suddenly.

“Why did not my lord come into the garden, to the roses and doves and-me?” she asked falteringly, her gaze held now irresistibly by the dark orbs above her. Then, afraid of her own temerity, she became white as death under his gaze.

But Ahmed was rather pleased by this first connected speech she had made in the interview. It sounded to him like the tender reproach of an amorous, expectant maiden, waiting eagerly for her love, too long delayed. The under-meaning, the terrible regret for irrevocable ill, naturally escaped him. He smiled, and put his arm round her shoulders. “Well, it is not too late,” he said, bending over her. But the girl shrank from his arm, and he realised it instantly. He was aware directly that there was some feeling in her not quite fathomed nor understood. It puzzled him. He was far too deep a thinker, far too refined a nature to treat his women as inanimate toys to be used for his amusement, either with or without their consent, as the chance might be. He knew them to be, and treated them as, individual souls, with right of will and desire equal to his own, and was too proud to accept the gift of the body unless he had first conquered the will. But usually there was no difficulty. Nature had gifted Ahmed with all the best treasures in her jewel-box; beauty of face and form, strength and grace, charm of voice and presence-everything needed to ensnare and delight the senses, and he was accustomed to be loved, passionately adored, and worshipped. He was naturally a connoisseur in such matters, and knew well and easily the truth or dissembling in them. But here there was neither: the girl shrank from him instinctively, and seemed possessed by nothing but dumb, helpless fear that was distressing to him. Yet not all distressing, for even in the best of male natures there always remains some of the instinctive desire of conquest, the delight in opposition, if not too prolonged, the love of battle, the hope of victory; and to Ahmed, the invariably successful lover, the resistance of this slight, rose-leaf creature he could crush with one blow of his hand roused suddenly all the primitive joy of the chase, the excitement of pursuit. Only, where with some natures it would have been brutal and rapid, the end and triumph assured, the prize the body; here it would be gentle and dexterous, the end dependent on another, the prize the soul-the soul, the will, the most difficult quarry to capture, as Ahmed knew.

He let his arm slip from her shoulders, and rose and walked over to the window, looking out for a moment into the delicious green beyond. Dilama half-sat, half-crouched upon the divan, not daring to stir, and watched him furtively.

Ahmed stood for a moment, and there was dead silence in the room. Then he returned and came towards the couch, standing opposite it, and looking down at her.

“Dilama, you seem very much afraid of me, and why is it? Look up and speak to me. There is no need for fear. Do you think I have called you here to force you to love me? There is no way of forcing love. You are free to come and go to and from this room as you will, but I am lonely and grieved, now Buldoula has been taken away from me. I would like you to come here and play and sing to me, and console me; will you?”

Dilama ventured to lift her eyes to the kingly figure before her, and meeting the pained, dark eyes bent on her, and realising that there was nothing, indeed, to make her fear but her own guilty conscience, she burst suddenly into an uncontrollable passion of weeping, and slipping from the couch fell sobbing at his feet.

Ahmed stooped and gathered her up in his arms, holding her to his breast, and this time she did not shrink from him, but lay there unresisting, crying violently. For a moment the clasp of his arm, the touch of gentle sympathy, soothed and comforted her. For one wild moment she longed to confide in him, to tell him the reality. What would happen? Was it possible that Ahmed would pardon her, and let her go to her own life, her own love and lover! No, it was not possible-any other offence but this; theft or murder he could have forgiven and sheltered, but this, no! Instinctively she knew and felt it would not be possible to him-a Turk, free from prejudice and superstition, liberal as he was-to forgive her crime. Death for herself and Murad was the best she could expect. Ahmed’s own honour, the traditions of all his house, his great position would make it impossible for him to let her pass from his, a Turk’s harem to a Druze lover. The thought whirled from her sick brain, leaving all confused and hopeless as before, and her tears rained fast. Ahmed smoothed her soft hair and kissed her forehead gently, as it lay against his breast.

“Go and fetch your music, and sing to me,” he whispered, as her sobs ceased. “See how lovely the spring time is; it is no time for tears, but for songs and-love.” He murmured the last word very softly and set her free. Without looking at him she slipped away to the door in obedience to his command, and in a wild confusion of feeling in which pleasure struggled with fear.

When she came back with her instrument, a small pear shaped guitar in appearance, she was more composed. Her eyes were still red and swollen, but the soft, elastic skin had already regained its colouring. As she entered, soft bars of sunlight were falling through the room, the window had been opened, and the song of the birds came gaily through it. Ahmed had ordered coffee and sweetmeats to be brought, and these now stood on a small inlaid table before her, on whose glistening arabesques of mother of pearl the sunbeams twinkled merrily. Ahmed’s eyes lighted up with tender pleasure as he saw her enter, and she noted it. He was still sitting on the couch, and held in his hand a small green leather case-the counterpart of hundreds to be seen in the jewellers’ windows in Paris. Dilama guessed at once it was some present for her. Unconsciously the light, gay, butterfly nature of the girl began to reassert itself in the knowledge that the final issue had not to be met then; that there was respite for her, delay; and a natural joy stirred in her looking across at Ahmed. It was something, after all, to be queen of the harem, to be wooed in gifts and smiles by its lord.

“Come here!” he said to her, and as she approached he opened the case and took from it a bracelet, a limp band of gold with a clasp of rubies and diamonds that flashed a thousand sparkling rays into the astonished eyes of the girl, accustomed only to the dull, uncut or poorly-cut gems of the East.

“How wonderful! Is it for me, really?” she exclaimed, as Ahmed took her unresisting arm and clasped the bracelet round it above the elbow, where it lent a new beauty to the flesh.

“Now, take some coffee, and then you shall play to me while I rest and smoke,” continued Ahmed, kissing her tenderly between the eyes, as she gazed up gratefully to him, and though she flushed and trembled, this time she did not shrink from him.

The coffee seemed more delicious than any that was served in the haremlik, and the gold-tipped cigarettes and the jam, made out of rose leaves, that Ahmed pressed upon her, delighted her senses and helped to make her think less of the passing hour and Murad, who would be waiting in stormy passion for her, in the angle of the wall. “I can’t help it; I can’t help it!” she thought to herself as she took up her instrument and bent over the strings to tune them, while Ahmed stretched himself at full length on the divan to listen, with a scarlet cushion supporting his regal head. She could both sing and play well, for Ahmed loved music, and wisely considered it a safe amusement-an outlet for superfluous passions and unexpressed feelings-for the women of the harem. Instruments were provided in plenty, and instruction and all encouragement given to them to learn, and from her first day in the harem Dilama’s natural voice and talents had been noted and fostered. This afternoon, at first she was timid, and sang and played stiffly, carefully, with a great attention to notes and strings; but slowly the calm and stillness of the beautiful sun-filled room, the scented air floating in from the garden, the tense atmosphere of passion about her, and the magic beauty of the face and form opposite influenced her, grew upon her, wrapped her round, and she began to sing passionately, ardently, with that abandonment, without which all music is a hollow sound. Her glorious voice, fresh, youthful, clear, and pure came rushing joyously over her lips and filled the room. Her spirits rose as she realised the power she was exerting. She felt a little impatient at the thought of Murad. After all, she was a great lady, a lady of the harem of Ahmed Ali, the richest Turk in Damascus. She was dressed in delicate silks, and the jewels blazed on her arm. She was queen of the harem, and the beloved of its lord. He was most desirable to her and to all women, and, but for Murad, who seemed to stand like a black shadow between, she would have lain upon his breast with pure delight. She leant forward now, singing rapturously over the instrument pressed close to her soft breast, while her rose-hued fingers leapt among its strings; a transparent flush, delicate as the tint of a shell, glowed in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes looked straight at Ahmed, drawing in all the proud beauty of his face; her hair lay soft and thick without its veil above her brows, and one heavy tress fell forward over her shoulder to her knee. Ahmed lay watching her, his eyes filled with sombre fires, his whole soul listening to the song; and one other lay listening also, and this was Murad, crouching in the shade of the orange-tree plantation, catching with distended ears that flood of passionate melody wafted to him over the still garden, from the window of Ahmed’s apartment, from the Selamlik.

When the song was finished, and the last notes had faltered softly into silence, Ahmed rose from his divan and crossed to where she sat. The room was full now of hot rosy light; the scent of the orange flowers poured in through the windows; the girl’s senses grew confused and dizzy. Her cheeks were flaming with the excitement and joy and effort and passion of her singing; her eyelids were cast down, and beneath them her eyes watched, half in terror, half in a strained delight, the blue Persian slippers advancing silently over the matting on the floor towards her.

“Will Dilama stay with me to-night?”

The girl looked up, whitening to the lips, and slid to a kneeling position. Terror at the thought of infidelity to Murad filled her; he would infallibly find it out and avenge himself. Her face worked convulsively; she stretched out her hands with a gesture of despair.

“What my lord wills: I am the slave of his wishes.”

Ahmed drew his level brows together, and for a moment lined the serene beauty of his forehead. He gazed at her with a steady, puzzled look, and at last a faint, half-quizzical smile relaxed his lips. What could this strange idea, this whim be, so unlike all Eastern maiden’s usual fancies? He had not yet solved the riddle, nor found the clue! he would do so, but in the meantime she must be left her freedom. In all noble natures power brings with it a terrible responsibility, and the habit of stern self-control and long forbearance. Ahmed’s complete power over the frightened piece of humanity before him brought upon him the necessity practically of surrender; for the Turk possesses one of the noblest and gentle natures the human race can boast of. Ahmed remained silent for a few seconds, and the girl gazed upon him with dilated, fascinated eyes. She noted in a dazed way how the dark blue robe parted on his breast and showed beneath a vest of gold silk, fastened a little to the side by a single emerald; how the column of throat towered above these, supporting the oval face and beautifully-modelled chin, and above these again, and the commanding brows, shone another solitary emerald between the folds of his turban on his forehead.

Murad began to seem like a robber depriving her of all these things. There is no fidelity in the body. Fidelity is a thing of the mind, always at war with and striving to coerce those instincts of the senses that are ever clamouring after the new and the unknown. Nature is ever driving us on to seek new mates. The mind with its trammels of affection, gratitude, pity, consideration, is ever dragging us back and seeking to tie us to the old. Nature’s rule is fresh seasons, fresh mates, new hours, new loves. And he who seeks fidelity must woo the mind, for the body cannot give it, and knows not its laws.

After a minute’s silence Ahmed stretched out his hand to her and raised her to her feet. His face had lost its smiles and fire; it was grave and sombre-looking now, but his voice was gentle as he answered her:

“You are free to return to the haremlik,” he said; “no one has any power to coerce you. I wish you to come and go as you will.” He waved his hand towards the curtain with a gesture of dismissal, and then turned away and rang a little silver bell on a table. The black slave appeared-it seemed almost instantly-before the curtain; while Dilama still stood, motionless, irresolute, with a curious sense of disappointment, mingling with relief, stealing over her. Ahmed beckoned the slave to him, and said something in a low voice Dilama did not catch, but the last sentence she overheard. “Send Soutouma to me,” and without taking any further notice of Dilama, Ahmed turned back towards the divan, threw himself upon it, and drew the pipe-stand towards him.

The black slave, with a smile on her curving lips, motioned to Dilama to precede her, and Dilama, with one look flung backward to Ahmed’s couch in the full sunlight of the window, passed under the heavy blue curtain out into the passage. “Send Soutouma to me!” the words went through her with a cutting feeling, as a knife dividing her flesh.

Soutouma was next to Buldoula in age and rank-a fair beauty of the harem, with soft, long, sunlit tresses, and a skin of snow.

“Yes, why not? why not?” asked Dilama wildly to herself as her feet dragged along down the passage side by side with the grinning black’s. “I am a Druze girl: I belong to Murad and to the mountains.” But the insidious charm of Ahmed’s personality worked on all the pulses of her body; pulses that know not fidelity, though her brain kept telling her that Murad would be waiting for her in the garden. But that night Murad did not come. The garden stood cool and fragrant, full of perfume and rosy light, full of the music of birds and the tints of a thousand flowers-all the invitations to love, but love itself was absent. Dilama searched the garden from end to end, and walked in and out among the roses by the buttressed wall, but the garden was empty and silent. She was alone. Tired at last, and ready to cry with fatigue and disappointment, she sat down by the red brick wall, leaning her chin on her hand and gazing up towards the windows of the Selamlik, which could only be seen in portions here and there through a leafy screen of plane-tree branches. How still it was in the garden, and how the scent of the orange flower weighed on the senses! How clear the pink, transparent air!

Through that same lucid air, under the spreading plane-trees, and through the great dim bazaars of the city, walked Murad that evening with quick, hot feet, and the liquid coursing in his veins seemed fire instead of blood. He went from Druze to Druze, wherever he could find them, in their own homes, or sitting at a shady corner of a street, where the tiny rush-bottomed stools are gathered round the tea-stalls with their hissing brazen urns and porcelain cups, or lounging in the bazaars, or at the marble drinking-fountains. Wherever they were he found them, and spoke a few hot, eager words to them, urging them to hurry forward their preparations, and be ready to start with the caravan at the rising of the full moon. Then, as the rosy light changed into violet dusk, he went home to his low, yellow, square-roofed dwelling on the edge of the desert, and sat there in his one unlighted room-sat there gazing out with unseeing eyes into the lustrous Damascus night beyond the open door, and with the fingers of his right hand playing absently with the handle of his knife.

A week had passed over and Ahmed had not sent again for Dilama, nor had Murad visited the garden, and to the Eastern girl it seemed as if the world had stopped still. The hot, languid days, the gorgeous nights with the blaze of the stars and the rapture of the nightingales, filled her with madness that seemed insupportable. She knew of no reason for Murad’s desertion. She could find out nothing. She did not dare to breathe a word to any one of the anxiety, the wonder, the desperation that seemed choking her. What had become of him? What had happened? Would he ever come again? And as he appealed only to her senses, and he was not there, she ceased to wish for him very much, but thought more of Ahmed and the Selamlik that were close to her. For the mind and the imagination love in absence and long after the absent one, but the senses are stirred by proximity, and turn to the one who is nearest.

One evening, when the soft sky was a clear crimson and the full moon rose a perfect disk of transparent silver, faint as yet in the blood-red glow, Dilama felt as if she could exist no longer in the still, even, unchanging peace of the women’s apartments. The song of the water without, the coo of the doves, the incessantly repeated love-note of the mating sparrows, seemed to madden her beyond endurance.

She lay face downwards on the soft carpet of her little sleeping-chamber, and moaned unconsciously aloud, “Let me die! let me die! I have lost favour with all men.”

The black slave was sitting cross-legged just outside the curtain, and when these slow, long drawn-out words came from the other side a light gleamed in her shrewd, beady-black eyes. With one claw-like hand she cautiously drew back a fold of the curtain, and peering in saw the foremost lady of the harem lying prostrate, her face pressed to the floor. She made no sound, but dropping the curtain noiselessly, sidled slowly off down the dark passage leading to the Selamlik. Ahmed was alone in his apartment when the slave appeared, sitting on the broad window ledge gazing out from the window which overlooked his grounds, and beyond them the white minarets and shining cupolas of the city. He turned at the interruption, but his face lighted up with pleasure as he recognised the women’s attendant, and he signed to her to approach.

“The Lady Dilama is weeping in her chamber, desiring my lord,” announced the slave, with much bowing and prostration, but still with that confidence which showed she knew how welcome the news would be to her august listener. Ahmed rose, a fire of joy leaping up suddenly within him.

“It is well,” he said, in an even tone. “Let the Lady Dilama come to me, and for yourself take this,” and he dropped beside the crouching heap of black back and shoulder a small velvet bag. The slave grabbed it and put it in her breast, muttering a thousand thanks and blessings, and withdrew.

Once outside, her lean black legs carried her swiftly back to Dilama’s room, where she pushed aside the curtain without ceremony.

“Come!” she said imperiously, “you are Ahmed Ali’s chosen one; he has sent for you. Put off that torn veil, and all that weeping. I have new robes here for you.”

Dilama, who had hurriedly gathered herself up at the slave’s entry, shrank away now into a corner of the room, white as death.

“Has he sent for me?” she asked breathlessly. “Commanded me? Oh, must I go?”

The slave looked at her strangely. She had no suspicion of Dilama’s secret, and had no idea that her own misrepresentations were as gross as they were. But she had no wish to be harsh or unkind to this girl, who would be in a few hours queen of the harem. She was puzzled. She drew near to Dilama’s shrinking form, and peered into her face.

“Yes, he commands,” she said; “but is it possible you do not wish to go to Ahmed? He is a king amongst men, and he loves you. What better fate could there be than to lie on his breast, in his arms? Is it not better than the ground to which you were crying just now? Surely you will reward me well to-morrow?”

Dilama answered nothing. Long shivers were passing through her. It was decided, then; she could no longer avoid her fate, and already with that thought the Oriental calm of acceptance came to her. Besides, where was Murad? She could not tell. Fate had taken him from her, perhaps-the same Fate that gave her to Ahmed. She was helpless. She had no choice but to obey. And the words of the slave, accompanied by those piercing, meaning looks, inflamed her senses. After that unbearable week of solitude the summons came to her not all unwelcome, and the supreme thought of Ahmed himself loomed up suddenly, bringing irresistible joy with it. A flame passed over her cheeks; she caught the slave’s skinny black hand between her own rose-leaf palms.

“Yes, I will reward you,” she murmured. “Dress me beautifully, decorate me that I may find favour with Ahmed.”

The slave laughed meaningly.

“Does the desert traveller burn and sigh after water, and then do the springs of Damascus not find favour in his eyes?” she asked, and laughed again as she approached Dilama, and began to undress her. In a few minutes the whole of the haremlik was in a state of pleasant excitement. The news of the dressing of the bride spread into its furthest corners, and the women came to talk and jest, and the servants fled hither and thither upon errands. Dilama was led into the large general room, and there bathed from head to foot with warm rose-water; while the others sat round and chatted together, and admired her ivory skin, with the wild rose Syrian bloom upon it, and her masses of gold-tinted chestnut hair. And the black slave bathed and anointed and dressed her with the utmost care and great self-importance, and sent the underslaves flying in all directions, one to gather syringa, and other heavy-scented blossoms from the garden, and another to fetch the jewels for her neck; and as the attar of rose bottle was found to be empty, a slave was sent with flying feet to the bazaar to purchase more; and Dilama, excited and elated, surrounded by jest and laughter and smiling faces, felt her youth leap up within her, and rejoice at coming into its kingdom-love.

In the bazaar the slave sped to the perfume-seller, and, swelling with the importance of his mission, stayed a moment to chatter with the dealer.

“They are dressing a new bride for my master, and I must hasten back,” he gossiped, lounging on the merchant’s little stall. “Ahmed Ali awaits her in the Selamlik; I must be going. They say her beauty is wonderful; she is not a Turk, but a Syrian from the mountains by Beirut. I must hasten: they will be waiting.”

“Yes, hasten on your way,” returned the perfume-seller. He was a Turk, dignified and gracious, and of no mind to listen to gossip from the harem, of which it was little short of scandalous to speak so publicly. He had other customers in his shop who could hear, amongst them a black-browed Druze in a green turban, who was waiting patiently his turn, and who seemed to listen intently to this most improper gossip. The slave disappeared with flying feet to catch up his wasted moments, but when the Turk turned to serve the silent Druze, he, too, had vanished, and some white-turbaned Arabs pressed forward in his place.

Dilama in her lighted chamber, with her fresh young eyes a little painted beneath their lids, and heavy gold chains about her soft young throat, sat looking into the little French mirror of cheap glass and gilt, and waiting for the attar of rose to be poured on her shining hair.

At last the boy returned breathless, and the precious stuff was poured on her hair and hands. Then she stood up radiant and the women sighed and smiled by turns as she went out, preceded by the old slave. A long narrow passage, lighted overhead by swinging coloured lamps, divided the women’s from the men’s apartments, and through this they passed noiselessly over the matting-covered floor. At the end fell heavy curtains, concealing the door and some steps. Here the slave left the girl, and Dilama went through the curtains alone. She mounted the steps and passed through the door. All was quite silent here, and the passage unlighted, except that through a tiny window high up above her head a streak of moonlight fell across her way. Dilama paused oppressed, she knew not by what feeling. Only a short passage and another curtained door divided her now from Ahmed’s presence. Her breath came fast, her pulses beat nervously, and her feet dragged; slowly and unwillingly she crept onward, harassed by cold, vague fears. Before the door itself she trembled, and her soft hands and wrists hardly availed to push it open. It yielded slowly, and fell to behind her in silence.

The room was full of light; a silver blaze of moonlight illumined it from end to end. The great windows, over which usually the curtains were drawn, stood uncovered and wide open to the soft Damascus air. The scent of roses and jessamine from the great man’s garden stole in with the silver light. The girl paused when just over the threshold: she was cold and frightened, and her body shook. Ahmed did not move or speak. He was sitting sideways to one great window, with his head resting against the high back of the one European chair that the room possessed. The light was so strong that the rich, deep blue of the turban was distinctly visible in it, but his face was in shadow. She could see, however, the noble throat and pose of the shoulders as he sat waiting. The girl’s heart beat with a little sense of pleasure as she looked. Her feet crept slowly a little farther into the room. A great tide of pleasure was really just outside her heart, and would have rushed in and overwhelmed it in waves of joy had she but opened her heart’s doors to it; but the shadow of Murad was on the bolts and locks, and she felt afraid. The silence and great silver light in the room oppressed her. Ahmed had not heard her enter, and had not stirred nor looked at her. She crept a little closer. The beauty of the majestic figure called her irresistibly. She drew closer. She had passed one window now, and was near enough to see the jewels flash on the slender hand that hung over the chair-arm, and the glistening light on the embroidered Turkish slippers on his feet. Shading her brow with one hand, Dilama came forward, fell at those feet and kissed them. Still there was no movement, no sound. This was so unlike Ahmed’s way of treating his slaves, that the girl, forgetting her fears, looked up in sheer surprise. Then her heart seemed to stop suddenly, and then leap with excessive thuds of horror against her breast. The face above her seemed carved in stone, pale, bloodless, calm; it was set, as the girl realised in a moment of terror and agony, in a repose that would never be broken. The large, dark eyes, still open, gazed past her, sightless, changeless. Fear, her fear of him, her awe, her oppressed terror fell from her, giving way to an infinite regret, a sorrow, a sense of loss that rushed over her, filling every cell, every atom of her being. She, the unwilling, the reluctant, the slow-coming, the grudging bride, now stood free. The bridegroom asked of her nothing, demanded nothing, needed nothing, desired nothing.

The slave-girl neither shrieked nor fainted. A great, convulsive sob tore itself from her trembling body as she rose from her knees and bent over the sitting figure. Wildly she passed her soft, shaking fingers across his brow, still warm, and round his throat, seeking mechanically the wound; then her eyes fell on the gold silk of his tunic, and just over the left breast she saw a little brown patch, and on the left side of the chair the silver light gleamed on a small, dark-red pool. He had been stabbed as he sat there, waiting for her-stabbed from the back, and the dagger thrust through to the little brown spot in the front of the tunic. And through that tiny door his life had gone.

Lying at his feet, Dilama sobbed uncontrollably, rolling her head, with its wonderful crown of flower-decked hair, and her pink-silk clad body amongst the rugs on the floor. What was the worth or use of anything now, silk or bridal attire, or beauty, or flower-decked hair? Never would any of them now be mirrored in his eyes again. Never could anything change that awful serenity, that implacable silence, out of which she felt her own love, her own desire rush upon her and devour her. Ahmed had been hers and she had shrunk from him, and now all the blood in her body she would have given willingly to replace that little scarlet stream that had borne away his life.

As she lay there, weeping in an agony of despair, a dark shadow suddenly grew in the window, and fell a black patch in the panel of white light upon the floor. A lithe figure balanced a moment on the ledge of the open window, then leapt with the silent elastic bound of a cat into the room. Dilama sprang from the floor to her knees with a smothered cry of terror.

“Murad! why have you come here?”

The Druze leant over her and caught her arm fiercely.

“To claim my own. It is not the first visit I have made to-night, as you see,” and as he dragged her up from her knees he indicated the motionless figure beside them.

“You killed him!” she whispered, gazing up with dilated, terrified eyes.

“Who should, if not I? Had he not taken my wife? Come, we must be going.”

With the nail-like grip on her arm, and the low, savage tones in her ears, and the blazing eyes like a tiger’s, inflamed with the lust of murder above her, the girl felt sick and half-fainting with fear and misery.

“He did not take me. I was always faithful, Murad. I love you. I-” she stammered.

“It is well,” returned Murad with a grim smile, “and these tears I suppose are because I was too long absent? It is true I have been some time: I had much to do, and then I knew I was quite safe, now I had settled all accounts with him. Come! the caravan is ready; the camels wait for you.”

He dragged her towards the open square, the great square of the window. Without, the night-flies and the moths danced in the silver beams, the trees rose motionless and stately in the sultry air, the gracious hours moved on with all the tranquil splendour of the Oriental night. The girl threw her eyes over the sitting figure, unmoved by all the strenuous passions fighting round it. Wildly, in despairing agony, she stretched out her arms towards it in a vain, unconscious passionate appeal.

The Druze struck them downwards, and gripping her unresisting body more tightly, he leapt from the window to the slight wooden staircase without, and, like a tiger with his prey, crept away stealthily through the silver silence of the rose garden towards the desert.