aids,--if it was not for her sake he was coming?

And then her lover told her of the gossip of the palace,--of the
Prince's life in the Sultan's court,--of his wit and grace,--of how
he had learned English, and was soon to go to London, where he would
be entertained by the Queen.

Above their heads the wind played with the tattered flags of the palms,
leaving openings here and there that exposed the steely-white glare
of the sky, and showed, far away to the northward, the denuded red
dome of Mount Ophir.

The girl noted the clusters of berries showing redly against the
dark green of some pepper-vines that clambered up the black nebong
posts of her home; she wondered vaguely as he talked if she were to
go on through life seeing pepper-vines and betel-nut trees, and hot
sand and featherless hens, and never get beyond the shadow of the
mysterious mountains.

Possibly it was the sight of the white ladies from Singapore, possibly
it was the few light words dropped by the half-grown Prince, possibly
it was something within herself,--something inherited from ancestors
who had lived when the fleets of Solomon and Hiram sought for gold
and ivory at the base of the distant mountains,--that drove her to
revolt, and led her to question the right of this marriage that was
to seal her forever to the attap bungalow, and the narrow, colorless
life that awaited her on the banks of the Maur. She turned fiercely
on her wooer, and her brown eyes flashed.

"You have never asked me whether I love!"

The Malay half rose from his seat. The look of surprise and perplexity
that had filled his face gave place to one of almost childish wonder.

"Of course you love me. Is it not so written in the Koran,--a wife
shall reverence her husband?"

"Why?" she questioned angrily.

He paused a moment, trying dimly to comprehend the question, and then
answered slowly,--

"Because it is written."

She did not draw away when he took her hand; he had chosen his answer
better than he knew.

"Because it is written," that was all. Her own feeble revolt was but
as a breath of air among the yellow fronds above their heads.

When Noa had gone, the girl drew herself wearily up the ladder, and
dropped on a cool palm mat near the never ceasing loom. For almost
the first time in her short, uneventful life she fell to thinking
of herself. She wondered if the white ladies in Singapore married
because all had been arranged by a father who forgot you the mom