back on the steamer,
tramping for cargo. He was not wanting in pluck as a usual thing, this
unsuccessful solicitor, but before a woman like this, with such a record
behind her, a man may well be scared and yet not be accused of
cowardice.

But the Lady Emir looked on Wenlock in a very different way to that in
which she had regarded Kettle. Mr. Wenlock possessed (as indeed he had
himself pointed out on the _Parakeet_) a fine outward appearance, and in
fact anywhere he could have been remarked on as a personable man. And
things came about as Kettle shrewdly anticipated they would. The Lady
Emir had not remained unmarried all these years through sheer distaste
for matrimony. She had been celibate through an unconquerable pride of
blood. None but men of colored race had been around her in all her wars,
her governings, and her diplomacies; and always she had been too proud
to mate with them. But here now stood before her a male of her own race,
handsome, upstanding, and obviously impressed by her power and majesty.
He would not rule her; he would not even attempt a mastery; she would
still be Emir--and a wife. The chance had never occurred to her before;
might never occur again. She was quick to make her decision.

Ruling potentates are not as other folk with their love affairs, and the
Lady Emir of Dunkhot (forgetting that she was once Teresa Anderson, and
a modest English maiden) unconsciously fell in with the rule of her
caste. The English speech, long disused, came to her unhandily, but the
purport of what she said was plain. She made proclamation that the
Englishman Wenlock should there and then become her husband, and let
slaves fetch the mullah to unite them before the sun had dropped below
another bar of the windows.

She did not ask her future husband's wishes or his permission. She
simply stated her sovereign will and looked that it should be carried
out forthwith.

A couple of slaves scurried out on their missions--evidently their Emir
was accustomed to have her orders carried out with promptness--and for
long enough Wenlock stood wordless in front of the divan, far more like
a criminal than a prospective bridegroom. The lady, with the tube of the
water-pipe between her lips, puffed smoke and made no further speech.
She had stated her will: the result would follow in due course.

But at last Wenlock, as though wrenching himself into wakefulness out of
some horrid dream, turned wildly to Kettle, and in a torre