ee there are two of them--are
neither kings nor princes; they are women!"

In the midst of the dispute the strangers arrived.

The camel seen at hand did not belie his appearance afar. A taller,
statelier brute of his kind no traveller at the fountain, though
from the remotest parts, had ever beheld. Such great black eyes!
such exceedingly fine white hair! feet so contractile when raised,
so soundless in planting, so broad when set!--nobody had ever seen
the peer of this camel. And how well he became his housing of silk,
and all its frippery of gold in fringe and gold in tassel! The
tinkling of silver bells went before him, and he moved lightly,
as if unknowing of his burden.

But who were the man and woman under the houdah?

Every eye saluted them with the inquiry.

If the former were a prince or a king, the philosophers of the
crowd might not deny the impartiality of Time. When they saw the
thin, shrunken face buried under an immense turban, the skin of
the hue of a mummy, making it impossible to form an idea of his
nationality, they were pleased to think the limit of life was for
the great as well as the small. They saw about his person nothing
so enviable as the shawl which draped him.

The woman was seated in the manner of the East, amidst veils and
laces of surpassing fineness. Above her elbows she wore armlets
fashioned like coiled asps, and linked to bracelets at the wrists
by strands of gold; otherwise the arms were bare and of singular
natural grace, complemented with hands modelled daintily as a
child's. One of the hands rested upon the side of the carriage,
showing tapered fingers glittering with rings, and stained at the
tips till they blushed like the pink of mother-of-pearl. She wore an
open caul upon her head, sprinkled with beads of coral, and strung
with coin-pieces called sunlets, some of which were carried across
her forehead, while others fell down her back, half-smothered in the
mass of her straight blue-black hair, of itself an incomparable
ornament, not needing the veil which covered it, except as a
protection against sun and dust. From her elevated seat she
looked upon the people calmly, pleasantly, and apparently so
intent upon studying them as to be unconscious of the interest
she herself was exciting; and, what was unusual--nay, in violent
contravention of the custom among women of rank in public--she
looked at them with an open face.

It was a fair face to see; quite youthful; in f