on the radiance of her hair, and the wonder of her body which the
diaphanous garment half concealed and half revealed.

Not a sign on the Arab's face, this dweller of the desert, whose
forefathers in wonderment had watched the ways of wisdom with which
Solomon in all his glory had ruled more than one fair and obstreperous
woman among the scented Eastern sands.

Face to face they stood, whilst the racing blood fled from the girl's
face down to the finger-tips of her contradictory hands. The hands she
knew so well, the square back, the square finger-tips, the long,
square, high-mooned, deeply laid nail. Hands which, coming to her down
the centuries through Quaker and through Puritan, were calling to her
to stand firm and hold the scales well-balanced, whilst the soft,
rounded palm, hidden in the golden fringe of her garment, and the
over-sensitive finger-tips, with little nerve-filled cushions at the
end of each, clamoured aloud for beauty and sweetness, tenderness and
mastery, as the great man, with the beads of Allah slipping noiselessly
through his fingers, reading the girl's thoughts as though they were
written on the wall, marked and watched with sombre eyes in the
breathless silence of the coming dawn.

Slowly the girl raised her eyes and scanned the man, from the
snow-white turban on the dark head, the softness of the silken shirt,
showing through the long, open, orange satin front of the voluminous
coat, which reached almost to the ankles, leaving exposed the trousers
of softest white linen, fastened close above the leather shoes, whilst
quite subconsciously she wondered what he would look like in European
evening dress.

Slowly she stretched out her long thin arms, until they almost touched
the golden embroidery on the coat, as slowly she turned her hands, and
looked at the glittering nails, the hands she knew and feared so much,
and turning them back again, with a little smile drew a finger-tip over
the hills and valleys of the palms. Higher still, until the pink and
scented palms were on a line with the man's stern mouth, whilst a sigh,
faint as the passing of a fly's wing, left his lips, as taking the
little hands in his, he drew the girl closer yet.

"Behold, you are beautiful, O! woman, whom I would take to wife. You
start! Why! For what manner of man have you taken me? Did you think
that being an Arab means being without honour? Nay! When my eyes fell
upon you standing in the sun, I knew tha