urnished interior the walls wainscoted in
Moorish mosaics and lined by broad divans covered with silken rugs.
Small tables stand about holding trays of cigarettes and sweets. Over
against a window overlooking a garden lounges a group of women--some
young, some old, one or two of them black as coal. It is the harem of
the Pasha, the father of Mahmoud, Prince of the Rising Sun, Chosen of
the Faithful, Governor of a province, and of forty other things
beside--most of which Joe had forgotten.

Months had passed since that night in the arbor. Yuleima had cried her
eyes out, and Mahmoud had shaken his fists and belabored his head,
swearing by the beard of the Prophet that come what might Yuleima
should be his.

Then came the death of the paternal potentate, and the young lover was
free--free to come and go, to love, to hate; free to follow the
carriage of his imperial master in his race up the hill after the
ceremony of the Selamlik; free to choose any number of Yuleimas for his
solace; free to do whatever pleased him--except to make the beautiful
Yuleima his spouse. This the High-Mightinesses forbade. There were no
personal grounds for their objection. The daughter of the rich Bagdad
merchant was as gentle as a doe, beautiful as a star seen through the
soft mists of the morning, and of stainless virtue. Her father had ever
been a loyal subject, giving of his substance to both church and state,
but there were other things to consider, among them a spouse especially
selected by a council of High Pan-Jams, whose decision, having been
approved by their imperial master, was not only binding, but final--so
final that death awaited any one who would dare oppose it. At the feast
of Ramazan the two should wed. Yuleima might take second, third, or
fortieth place--but not first.

The young prince gritted his row of white teeth and flashed his
slumbering eyes--and they could flash--blaze sometimes--with a fire
that scorched. Yuleima would be his, unsullied in his own eyes and the
world's, or she should remain in the little white house on the brown
hill and continue to blur her beautiful eyes with the tears of her
grief.

Then the favorite slave and the faithful caique-ji--the one who found
the little cove even on the darkest night--put their heads
together--two very cunning and wise heads, one black and wrinkled and
the other sun-tanned and yellow--with the result that one night a new
odalisque, a dark-skinned, black-haired houri,