at her waist. She leads him on, through wide porticoes and narrow passages, wide state-rooms and cupboard-like chambers, till they come to a dark blue screen at the entrance to one room. She points significantly with tell-tale fingers to the foot of the screen, and he knows that behind it sits a fierce African Eunuch dressed in kincob, a naked scimitar upon his knees, swaying himself to and fro.
We cannot follow the dream-tale through all its mazes. The Iranian slave-girl becomes the cotton-clerk's nightly visitant; and every night her mysterious call and his wanderings begin afresh, till at last she seems to be half materialised in the day too. She would appear by lamp-light, seen first in a tall mirror which reflected the splendour of a Shahzada, the gleam of a bronze neck, the melancholy glance of two large dark eyes; while a hinting, a mere tinge of unuttered speech, seemed to hang on her lips. But then, just as she turned to lean towards him, her form swaying like the slender stem of a creeper, she would melt away in the mirror. With a scattering of sparks the bright gleams of her jewels, and the broken glimpses of her smile, her pity and longing and unknown trouble, were
