this should come to the ears of the great Sheik Ali ben Mohammed, what calamities will befall us all! Were you to marry this fool of a drug-mixer this very night, the next full moon would find you both dead of his wrath, or you a widow and mayhap a slave; whence I would either be a slave of nobody or a slave of a slave."
"Have no fear, Ya Ummi, that I will marry him this night, nor any other," said the girl."He does not even know that I exist; much less does he care. Go now. Prepare my bath and cease your wailing, or people will chink we have a death in the house."
Now, effendi, having heard all this,
and seeing the girl cooing softly
to the little bird, which had grown tired
and tucked its head under its wing, I was
more than ever affected by the beauty and
modesty of this maiden, and the secret
love she bore me, and desired her above
all my possessions and above all the
wealth which it had been my hope to acquire.
Yea, I desired her even above my
hope of Paradise.
This being so clear in my mind as to admit of no doubt, and I being a man of action, I climbed to the top of the wall and noiselessly let myself down not ten paces from her. So silent was my tread in my mezz of soft morocco, that I stood beside her, yet she was not aware of my presence.
Folding my arms, and bowing my head, like a slave awaiting the will of his master, I coughed gently.
She looked up at me, uttered a stifled cry of fear, and sprang to her feet on the other side of the diwan. Then, seizing a wrap of flimsy, translucent material, she threw it over her head and drew a corner across her face so that only her glorious, terrified eyes were visible.
"Have no fear, O lady," I said, "and make no outcry, for I will go at your command, but only humbly ask leave to say what I have come, to say before I depart."
"Oh, my misfortune! Oh, my sorrow! Oh, my disgrace!" she exclaimed, drawing still farther away from me. "And alas, it is Hamed the Attar who brings this shame upon me."
"Nay, Hamed your Slave," I replied. "Wilt vouchsafe me but a moment to say that which I have come to say?"
For answer, she flashed at me such a look of scorn that I truly felt the very slave I had named myself. Then she turned her shapely back on me and started toward the stairway.
"Wait," I pleaded, whipping my jambiyah from its sheath and poising its keen, curved blade above my heart, "or you leave only the corpse of Hamed your Slave behind you."
At this, she turned and surveyed me with a look of concern that flooded my heart with hope. Her words, however, were words of scorn.
"Alas," she said, "that my faith in you has been so rudely destroyed. I had thought you different from other men, and better, yet you violate the sanctity of the harim without so much as a single 'destoo'r' to warn me to veil my face. You, whom I had thought so good and so pious, enter my house like a common thief, to my disgrace and your own unending shame. Now you heap injury upon injury by threatening to take your life here. Take it, if you will, for it is a worthless thing, but pray do so elsewhere."
Humiliated beyond words, I sheathed my jambiyah, bowed low, and slowly walked back to the wall over which I had just come. I realized that every heartstabbing word she had uttered was truth, and that I had committed one of the most disgraceful crimes a believer may com-
