d risen with the general, stared for a second and bowed.

"Muhammad's prophecy is realized," he murmured; and as Mrs. Lyeth eyed
him inquiringly, "At sunset," he added, "I behold a rising sun."

And moving forward he took her wrist and brushed it with his lips.

"One might fancy one's self at Versailles," Mrs. Lyeth replied, and sank
into a wicker chair.

"Olympus, rather," Tancred corrected, and found a seat at her side.

"H'm," mused the lady; but evidently nothing pertinent could have
occurred to her, for she hesitated a moment and then graciously enough
remarked, "The general tells me he knows your father."

"Yes, it may even be that we are connected; there was a Sosinje van Lier
who married an Ennever, oh, ages ago. The general, however, thinks she
was not a relative of his."

"I have forgotten," the general interjected, and glanced at his future
bride. "Is Liance never coming?"

From without came the hum of insects, a hum so insistent, so enervating,
and yet so Wagnerian in intensity that you would have said a nation of
them celebrating a feast of love. Presently the murmurs were punctuated
by the beat of a wooden gong, and as the reverberations fainted in the
night, a young girl appeared.

The general left his chair again.

"My daughter," he announced; and as Tancred bowed he remembered that the
general had been a widower before he became engaged to the divinity that
sat at his side.

"You're an American, aren't you?" the girl asked.

There was nothing forward in her manner: on the contrary, it was languid
and restrained, as though the equatorial sky had warped her nerves. But
her eyes had in them the flicker of smoldering fire; they seemed to
project interior flames. Her complexion was without color, unless indeed
olive may be accounted one. Her abundant hair was so dark it seemed
nearly blue. At the corners of her upper lip was the faintest trace of
down. Her frock was like the night, brilliant yet subdued; it was black,
but glittering with little sparks; about her bare arms were coils of
silver, and from her waist hung cords of plaited steel. She looked as
barbaric as Mrs. Lyeth looked divine.

"Yes," Tancred answered, smilingly; but before he could engage in
further speech, the general's "boy" announced that dinner was served.

"What do you think of it there?" asked Mrs. Lyeth, whose arm he found
within his own.

And as they passed from the bale-bale, as an uninclosed pavilion is
called, to