be thy couch.
And yet, thou child of love, even at this moment when my heart waxeth
faint within me from love of thee, yet will I listen, and take thee
back unto thy dwelling and thy fragrant chamber if so thou desireth!"

But Jill, lifting her arms, laid her hands in utter submission upon the
man's breast, and sighed again in perfect content beneath the kisses
which covered them, and her arms and her breasts and her beautiful
mouth.

"As thou wilt," she whispered softly, "only as thou wilt."

And verily as a young tree she stood in the glory of her youth with her
feet upon the sands of Egypt, and verily was her heart glad when she
was carried into the inner chamber, and passed into the keeping of her
master for ever.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Some months had gone, and the sun sparkled on the water of the little
singing stream, though bitter winds had blown and all-enveloping sand
had swirled about the palms which surrounded Jill's beautiful home in
the oasis, of which the reins were gradually slipping into fingers
skilled in driving anything from a four-in-hand to a donkey in a cart.

Three mornings a week, an hour after dawn, she gave audience to all
those who, with grievance or in difficulty, desired her help or advice;
for which ceremony, and having the dramatic instinct, she had caused a
clearing to be made in the shade of the palms, under the biggest of
which she had also had placed a great chair of snow-white marble, in
which, clothed always in white, she would seat herself, her passionate
mouth smiling happily behind the yashmak whilst over it the great eyes,
into which had crept a look of infinite tenderness in the months that
had passed, would scrutinise the people standing humbly and astounded
before her.

She would look across upon mothers with obstreperous sons who would not
work, or would not wed; mothers who beat their breasts in despair at
the utter lack of looks or grace in the unfortunately multiplied
feminine arrows within the parental quiver; young men who craved a word
of recommendation so as to obtain a certain post; older men who craved
an overdraft at the bank of her patience; young mothers whose infants
were either too fat or too lean, or with eyes half-eaten away with
disease; all of whom having received a full measure of help, pressed
down and running over, and having bestrewn themselves upon the ground
around her chair, would depart in high fettle to spread the news of
this wonder woman