of her
lips, and he was puzzled and perturbed by the sweet, baffling beauty
of her. A wild elation began to swell his heart. His eyes glowed,
his blood burned with the triumph, not so much of his daring capture
of her, but of the flattering tribute that her pretty ways were
paying toward his personality alone. Wary as he was, cynical of
subterfuge, he did not penetrate her guard. His monstrous vanity
whispered eager flattery in his ears.

And still he continued to stare at her, finding her unbelievably
lovely. "My grandfather would call you an _houri_ from paradise,"
he told her, the warmth of admiration deepening in his eyes.

"And your grandfather's grandson knows that I am only an _houri_
from America!... But that _is_ paradise for _houris_!"

"And not for men, no!... Sometimes I have wished that those English
would restore in me that young belief in the heaven of the Prophet,"
he continued, smiling, "and now that wish is granted. It is here,
that paradise," and his smile, flashing about the lonely garden,
came to dwell again upon the girl before him.

She laughed. "But does one _houri_ make a paradise?" she bantered,
while the beating, hurrying heart of her went faster and faster till
she thought his ears would hear it. "We have a proverb--one swallow
does not make a summer."

"_Cela depend_--that depends upon the _houri_.... When _you_ are
that one it is paradise indeed." He leaned toward her, speaking
softly, but with a voice that thrilled more and more in its own
eloquence.

She was the Rose of Desire, he reminded her, and beside her all
other flowers drooped in envy. She was as lovely as young Dawn to
the eyes of men. She was the ravishing embodiment of gaiety and
youth and delight. He quoted from the poets, not from his own
Oriental poets, but snatches from Campion and Wilde, vowing that

"There was a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow,"

and adding, with points of fire dancing in his heavy lidded eyes,

"Her neck is like white melilote,
Flushing for pleasure of the sun,"

and went on to add praise to praise and extravagance to
extravagance, till a sudden little imp of mirth caught Arlee by the
throat, hysterically choking her. "I shall never like praise or
poetry or--or men again," she thought, struggling between wild
laughter and hot disgust, while aloud she mocked, "Ah, you know too
much poetry, Captain Kerissen! I do not recognize myse