Tistar-star rises, fortune
will begin to shine on you. Why do you look down? Why don't you answer?
Gratitude stops your pretty little mouth, eh? is that the reason? Well,
my little bird, I hope you won't be quite so silent, if you should ever
have a chance of praising poor Boges to your powerful mistress. And what
message shall I bring to the handsome Gaumata? May I say that you have
not forgotten him and will be delighted to see him again? You hesitate?
Well, I am very sorry, but it is getting dark and I must go. I have to
inspect the women's dresses for the birthday banquet. Ah! one thing I
forgot to mention. Gaumata must leave Babylon to-morrow. Oropastes is
afraid, that he may chance to see you, and told him to return to Rhage
directly the festival was over. What! still silent? Well then, I really
cannot help you or that poor fellow either. But I shall gain my ends
quite as well without you, and perhaps after all it is better that you
should forget one another. Good-bye."

It was a hard struggle for the girl. She felt nearly sure that Boges was
deceiving her, and a voice within warned her that it would be better to
refuse her lover this meeting. Duty and prudence gained the upper hand,
and she was just going to exclaim: "Tell him I cannot see him," when
her eye caught the ribbon she had once embroidered for her handsome
playfellow. Bright pictures from her childhood flashed through her mind,
short moments of intoxicating happiness; love, recklessness and longing
gained the day in their turn over her sense of right, her misgivings
and her prudence, and before Boges could finish his farewell, she called
out, almost in spite of herself and flying towards the house like a
frightened fawn: "I shall expect him."

Boges passed quickly through the flowery paths of the hanging-gardens.
He stopped at the parapet end cautiously opened a hidden trap-door,
admitting to a secret staircase which wound down through one of the
huge pillars supporting the hanging-gardens, and which had probably been
intended by their original designer as a means of reaching his wife's
apartments unobserved from the shores of the river. The door moved
easily on its hinges, and when Boges had shut it again and strewed a few
of the river-shells from the garden walks over it, it would have been
difficult to find, even for any one who had come with that purpose. The
eunuch rubbed his jeweled hands, smiling the while as was his custom,
and murmured: "It