"It could not last. The sight of a face so intimately inwoven in my mind with the memory of hers; the sound of a voice that had blended with hers that night of meeting; the frequent mention; the nearer hope; all worked secretly, and prepared the inward stab of my peace that bleeds even now, and will bleed till death. It was given suddenly; in sleep.

"That evening, Moharib and I had sat up till late in the open air, between the tents and the village, both of them whitened by the intense moonlight of the plain. After much talk, chiefly of her, we separated; and I returned, more serious than before, but still cheerful, to my accustomed lodging-place, and lay down. for rest.

"Sleep soon came, but unquiet, and full of dreams. It seemed to me that I was embarked on a ship, sailing over a distant and stormy sea; Zahra' was in a boat close by; I strove to come to her, and she to me; in vain; the waves drove us apart. Then I was at Rosenau, my birthplace; Zahra' sat by me in my father's house; but all around the table were the faces of corpses; her face, too, was fixed and deadly pale. Then I was at Bagdad, in the sleeping room; my old master was speaking to me about Zahra'; blood

ran down his dress. Sa'eed lay near dead; I felt, but could not see, his fingers cold in my hand. At last these too disappeared; and gave place to a dream so vivid, so painfully real, that no waking pang could have exceeded its anguish; I have never since ceased to feel it."

"What was the dream?" asked Tantawee, as Hermann paused an instant. “Can you repeat it?"

"I could, even now," replied Hermann; "point by point, just as it came before me; the miserable vividness of its representation has not been softened by lapse of time, nor can be. But tell it so I cannot, nor will. Hear it, however, as I put it into verse five months later, while sailing, drear and lonely, along the Bahreyn coast.'

"Oh why is memory in the brain?

Or why the hated dreams of sleep?
To weave the real with imaged pain,
And weep-out tears again to weep.
Last night, within the garden-bower
We sat together, side by side;
The lover of an ill-starred hour,

And she that should have been my bride.

"I spoke, she answered words of love;
I sought her drooping hand to clasp.

I In the Persian Gulf.

She looked around, beneath, above,
And trembled to return the grasp.
I asked a kiss; her lips she gave,

A hasty gift, as snatched from fear;
So hastes the oft-detected slave

Who knows his master's footsteps near.

"Then round my neck her arms she cast,
And on my breast her head she laid,
And present woe and anguish past
In one brief moment overpaid.
'Yet, dearest, why this silence long
To many a message, many a line?
What cold mistrust, what trait'rous wrong
To fraud me of thy answering sign?

"Oh, words of scorn and words of shame

Are all for months these ears have heard; From thee nor line nor message came,

But aching heart, and hope deferred. I knew thou wouldst not leave me so; Not thine the heart to change or pall; Thou couldst not thus her love forego Who gave thee much, who gave thee all.'

"Her tears were trickling on my cheek,

Her scattered locks my arm o'erspread, And the wild kiss that fain would seek To drain life's proper fountain-head. I clasped her round, I bade her rise, I bade her fly nor tarry more;— Hermann Agha. II.

'New love, new hope before us lies,
And open stands the prison door.'

"Oh, how to rise, or how to fly?

The toils of fate are round me thrown:

I cannot live; I may not die;

No more thy love; no more thy own.'
A rustling tread, a parted bough,

A hateful face; alone I lay:

Full through the casement on my brow

Glared the broad mockery of the day.

"And did you actually dream all this?" said Tanṭawee.

"All of it from beginning to end, the false with the true, the fancied with the real," answered Hermann. "In the verses I have now recited there is not a word or a circumstance but was then present to me in my dream. I knew it for mere idle self-torture; yet it was of evil omen; and I felt it to be so, and did my best to shake it off, but could not. Let it be." With an effort he again went on.

"When I woke, the sun, shining in through the small window-aperture in the side wall and the half open door, stood considerably above the horizon. I was alone; Aman had gone out in quest of milk, or perhaps merely to idle and gossip with the villagers; the old woman, my

Moharib and his com

hostess, did not appear. panions were in their tents. With a new feeling of loneliness, I went thither, hoping to find some indications of the departure which I now longed for feverishly; but there too I met with no sign of stirring for the day. One Arab lay stretched on the ground, negligently scratching it with a stick; a second was smoking his sebeel;' a third was asleep. Moharib greeted me, and invited me to share in a bowl of half-dried dates that stood by, but seemed as little inclined to move as the rest. It was my first lesson in the apparent apathy of the Bedouin character, alternating with intense activity and prolonged endurance. I did not relish it, but had no remedy but to submit.

"A third day came, and, much to my annoyance, passed in precisely the same manner: I could neither understand the reasons of the delay, nor when it would be at an end. That evening, however, I learnt the cause from Moharib. There was danger on the road before us from some hostile tribes, Seba'a and Fida'an he called them, with whose movements he and his men were evidently, how I could not divine, well acquainted;

I The short tobacco-pipe common among Bedouins.