wer of the Arabian
Prophet abhors the draughts which deprive man of the full use of the
senses, intelligence, and conscience which Allah has bestowed, and
degrade him below the brute, Esmo's children, moreover, were not more
strictly compelled to respect the letter than carefully instructed in
the principle of every command for which he claimed their obedience.

But in such measure as Eveena's distress became intelligible, the
fault of which she accused herself became incredible. I could not
believe that she could be wilfully disloyal to me--still less that she
could have suddenly broken through the fixed ideas of her whole life,
the principles engraved on her mind by education more stringently than
the maxims of the Koran or the Levitical Law on the children of
Ishmael or of Israel; and this while the impressive rites of
Initiation, the imprecation at which I myself had shuddered, were
fresh in her memory--their impression infinitely deepened, moreover,
by the awful mystery of that Vision of which even yet we were half
afraid to speak to one another. While I hesitated to reply, gathering
up as well as I could the thread of these thoughts as they passed in a
few seconds through my mind, my left hand touched an object hidden in
my bride's zone. I drew out a tiny crystal phial three parts full,
taken, as I saw, from the medicine-chest Esmo had carefully stocked
and as carefully fastened. As, holding this, I turned again to her,
Eveena repeated: "Punish, but don't question me!"

"My own," I said, "you are far more punished already than you deserve
or I can bear to see. How did you get this?"

Releasing her hands, she drew from the folds of her robe the electric
keys, which, by a separate combination, would unlock each of my
cases;--without which it was impossible to open or force them.

"Yes, I remember; and you were surprised that I trusted them to you.
And now you expect me to believe that you have abused that trust,
deceived me, broken a rule which in your father's house and by all our
Order is held sacred as the rings of the Signet, for a drug which
twelve days ago you disliked as much as I?"

"It is true."

The words were spoken with downcast eyes, in the low faltering tone
natural to a confession of disgrace.

"It is not true, Eveena; or if true in form, false in matter. If it
were possible that you could wish to deceive me, you knew it could not
be for long."

"I meant to be found out," she interrupted, "o