We were gone from that moment--I know it now, looking back. Gone! We
were lost the moment Tufik stood in the doorway, smiling and bowing.
Tish saw us going; and with the calmness of the lost sat there nibbling
cake and watching us through her spectacles--and raised not a hand.

Aggie looked at the doily and Tufik looked at her.

"That's--that's really very nice of you," said Aggie. "I thank you."

Tufik came over and stood beside her.

"I give with my heart," he said shyly. "I have had nobody--in all so
large this country--nobody! And now--I have you!" Aggie saw--but too
late. He bent over and touched his lips to her hands. "The Bible says:
'To him that overcometh I will give the morning star!' I have
overcometh--ah, so much!--the sea; the cold, wet England; the Ellis
Island; the hunger; the aching of one who has no love, no money! And
now--I have the morning star!"

He looked at us all three at once--Charlie Sands said this was
impossible, until he met Tufik. Aggie was fairly palpitant and Tish was
smug, positively smug. As for me, I roused with a start to find myself
sugaring my ice cream.

Charlie Sands was delayed that night. He came in about nine o'clock and
found Tufik telling us about his home and his people and the shepherds
on the hills about Damascus and the olive trees in sunlight. We
half-expected Tufik to adopt Charlie Sands as a father; but he contented
himself with a low Oriental salute, and shortly after he bowed himself
away.

Charlie Sands stood looking after him and smiling to himself. "Pretty
smooth boy, that!" he said.

"Smooth nothing!" Tish snapped, getting the bridge score. "He's a
sad-hearted and lonely boy; and we are going to do the kindest thing--we
are going to help him to help himself."

"Oh, he'll help himself all right!" observed Charlie Sands. "But, since
his people are Christians, I wish you'd tell me how he knows so much
about the inside of a harem!"

Seeing that comment annoyed us, he ceased, and we fell to our bridge
game; but more than once his eye fell on Aggie's doily, and he muttered
something about the Assyrian coming down like a wolf on the fold.

II

The problem of Tufik's future was a pressing one. Tish called a meeting
of the three of us next morning, and we met at her house. We found her
reading about Syria in the encyclopaedia, while spread round her on
chairs and tables were numbers of silk kimonos, rolls of crocheted lace,
shirt-waist patterns, and