was, consciously read their meaning, but I felt it; and I knew within myself that which my reasoned thoughts could neither comprehend nor reach.

"The present!' I exclaimed, 'let it suffice! you tell me. But, O my sister, answer me, in God's name answer me, what is then the present?' I choked as I said it.

"It is yours, all yours, Aḥmed, my brother.' She dropped her look with the words. Her hand, white, slender, yet firmly knit, lay in mine; I pressed it; the pressure was returned.

Zahra'!' She raised her head; her eyes

met mine. Zahra', do you love me?' Both

her hands were clasped between mine as I said it.

"I do,' she answered.

"All was still; the head of each leaned

on the other's neck.

Hope, fear, thought, past,

future, everything had vanished from before me; I only knew that I was loved that I loved, and was happy.

"The sun-rays at our feet moved upwards, and glowed full on us where we sat. Again, but now with greater freedom of feeling and speech, we were engaged in talk and laugh, in question and answer; we seemed to be really brother and sister brought up together from childhood. You smile incredulously, Tanţawee; but I tell you that such was the entire excellence of her maiden purity, such the simple dignity of her undoubting frankness, that instead of being tempted to presume on her avowed affection, I now became more than ever ashamed of my own first boyish coarseness of demeanour; and imagined her, or anyhow thought that I imagined her, a newly-acquired sister, in whom I felt, revived and intensified tenfold, all the long-repressed

affections and memories of family and home. It was not only thus, it was far more, but I did not know it then; I knew it afterwards, but not that hour nor that day."

"Jameel and Botheynah, or Mejnoon'Aamir and Leyla' over again," remarked Tantawee. "To make love with much warmth, yet more self-restraint; to be content to give and receive the assurance of longing love alone, without hope of attainment, as though the mind were everything and the body nothing; and thus to remain through every vicissitude of life, constant to honour in spite of opportunity, to virtue in spite of passion, and to attachment in spite of separation, however prolonged; and all this till the hour of death itself, an hour welcomed as the seal of inviolable

1 Celebrated Arab lovers; Jameel and Mejnoon were both first-rate poets.

fidelity. This is a thing, I believe, of no rare Occurrence among Arab youths and maidens; at least it was so before the gross lessons of Mahometan materialism. Indeed those lessons have been but partially learnt even now, thank Heaven, by the Arab tribes in their own native land; though thoroughly appreciated and practised by Turks, Koordes, Persians, and their like. The wonder to me is, not that your Zahra' should have been such, but how her refinement and self-command communicated themselves to, or at least subdued, your coarser European nature.'

Hermann listened thoughtfully; then con

tinued.

"All this I understood afterwards, and I felt it even then, indistinctly indeed, yet enough to impose on me a sense of bashfulness, mixed with a kind of awe, as for a superior being, which intensified while it repressed the

daring of more passionate desire. But I was less disposed to analyse than to enjoy. Enough; we remained thus, forgetful, I at least, of the world and all belonging to it outside of our happy hiding-place; till the lengthening sunbeams, breaking in more and more level through the leafy screen around us, warned us of approaching evening. She was the first to give the sign of parting.

"And when again, dearest Zahra'?' said I, as I clasped her hands within mine.

"Not to-morrow,' she answered; 'there might be danger; but the day after, early in the morning, at the first call to prayer1 you will find me here.'

"I pleaded hard for a meeting the very next day; but she instead repeated her cautioning, and warned me against rashness

1

About an hour and a quarter before sunrise.