bt.'"

"This"--tightening and relaxing the clasp of her zone--"is the symbol
of stricter or more indulgent household rule." Then bending so as to
avert her face, she unclasped her embroidered sandal and gave it into
my hand;--"and this is what, I suppose, you would call its sanction."

"There is more to be said for the sandal than I supposed, bambina, if
it have helped to make you what you are. But you may tell Zulve that
its work and hers are done."

Kneeling before her, I kissed, with more studied reverence than the
sacred stone of the Caaba, the tiny foot on which I replaced its
covering.

"Baby as she thinks and I call you, Eveena, you are fast unteaching me
the lesson which, before you were born and ever since, the women of
the Earth have done their utmost to impress indelibly upon my
mind--the lesson that woman is but a less lovable, more petulant, more
deeply and incurably spoilt child. Your mother's reproach is an exact
inversion of the truth. No one could have acted with more utter
unselfishness, more devoted kindness, more exquisite delicacy than you
have shown in this miserable matter. I could not have believed that
even you could have put aside your own feelings so completely, could
have recognised so promptly that I was not in fault, have thought so
exclusively of what was best and safe for me in the first place, and
next of what was kind and just and generous to your rivals. I never
thought such reasonableness and justice possible to feminine nature;
and if I cannot love you more dearly, you have taught me how deeply to
admire and honour you. I accept the situation, since you will have it
so; be as just and considerate henceforward as you have been to-night,
and trust me that it shall bring no shadow between us--shall never
make you less to me than you are now."

"But it must," she insisted. "I cannot now be other than one wife
among many; and what place I hold among them is, remember, for you and
you alone to fix. No rule, no custom, obliges you to give any
preference in form or fact to one, merely because you chanced to marry
her first."

"Such, nevertheless, did not seem to be the practice in your father's
house. Your mother was as distinctly wife and mistress as if his sole
companion."

"My father," she replied, "did not marry a second time till within my
own memory; and it was natural and usual to give the first place to
one so much older and more experienced. I have no such claim, and when