day in
the clothes you have on now."

"Not if you object to them, my Heart."

"Eigh, good! And must I come in my ordinary Sunday dress? It is so
plain; it has not a single ruffle to it."

"And what are ruffles for?"

"I never saw a bride in a plain gown; they all have ruffles and
flounces to them. And when I look at your lovely hair--O let people
say what they like! A gown without ruffles is ugly.--So, you will buy
me a sky-blue silk dress, _ya habibi_ and a pink one, too, with plenty
of ruffles on them? Will you not?"

"Yes, my Heart, you shall have what you desire. But in the desert you
can not wear these dresses. The Arabs will laugh at you. For the women
there wear only plain muslin dipped in indigo."

"Then, I will have but one dress of sky-blue silk for the wedding."

"Certainly, my Heart. And the ruffles shall be as many and as long as
you desire them."

And while the many-ruffled sky-blue dress is being made, Khalid,
inspired by Najma's remarks on his hair, rhapsodises on flounces
and ruffles. Of this striking piece of fantasy, in which are
scintillations of the great Truth, we note the following:

"What can you do without your flounces? How can you live without your
ruffles? Ay, how can you, without them, think, speak, or work? How can
you eat, drink, walk, sleep, pray, worship, moralise, sentimentalise,
or love, without them? Are you not ruffled and flounced when you first
see the light, ruffled and flounced when you last see the darkness?
The cradle and the tomb, are they not the first and last ruffles of
Man? And between them what a panoramic display of flounces! What clean
and attractive visible Edges of unclean invisible common Skirts! Look
at your huge elaborate monuments, your fancy sepulchers, what are they
but the ruffles of your triumphs and defeats? The marble flounces,
these, of your cemeteries, your Pantheons and Westminster Abbeys. And
what are your belfries and spires and chimes, your altars and
reredoses and such like, but the sanctified flounces of your churches.
No, these are not wholly adventitious sanctities; not empty,
superfluous growths. They are incorporated into Life by Time, and they
grow in importance as our AEsthetics become more inutile, as our
Religions begin to exude gum and pitch for commerce, instead of
bearing fruits of Faith and Love and Magnanimity.

"The first church was the forest; the first dome, the welkin; the
first altar, the sun. But that was, when man wen