"Too much!" he whispered, peering at her with a dreadful longing across
the chasm that lay between her will and his terror of extinction.

"No! You shall see!"

She felt that this must be the object of her life-long wishes and
antipathies--that her sense of the preciousness of mortal life and
beauty, and her hunger for participation in the development of both,
were instincts intended to make her indomitable now. Suddenly she had
one of those rare moments when the wall is so strengthened by a feeling
of worthy purpose that it becomes tremendous, and everything opposed to
it seems as good as vanquished. It was with an accent of accomplished
victory that she repeated:

"You shall see!"

And now, indeed, the drowning man clutched at the flower that
epitomized the dear world.

"Lilla! Never let go of my hands! Yes, it's true; while I hold them I
hold fast to life; but if you let go of them, in that moment I'll go
tumbling down into the pit. Do you realize that by this time I should
probably be already gone, if you hadn't appeared? I am a dead man who
lives, who even does this work, because of the hold of these slender
hands of yours."

In that clutch of his, all at once so strong despite his feebleness,
Lilla found no sinister portent. She was thinking:

"Death conquered me once; but now I shall conquer death."

CHAPTER XXVI

Next day, when a maid announced that Hamoud-bin-Said was waiting in the
library, Lilla felt that the time had come to "stop that nonsense."
Her desire to learn Arabic now seemed to her an absurd caprice; and
once more she had reason to wonder at her swift passage from one
enthusiasm to another, her intense preoccupation with things that
suddenly became insufferable. She entered the library dressed and
hatted for the street, pulling on her gloves; and while occupied with
her glove buttons said calmly, in her enchanting voice:

"I'm going to be very busy for a while. I suppose I ought to have
given you a little notice; so I'm writing you a check for two-weeks'
lessons."

Hamoud stood before her, tall and spare, in a new, black alpaca suit as
incongruous-looking as the old one. He made no response at once; and
there was no change in his perfectly chiseled, tan features; but for
all his impassiveness he managed remarkably to convey the impression
that an immense calamity had befallen him. His full eyelids remained
lowered, as if he were considering his whole unfortunate dest