iny; and a
sort of loneliness, produced no doubt by his strangeness in this room,
hovered round his shapely head that was covered with straight, black
locks.

Lilla felt a twinge of compunction, as she reflected:

"Who in this town except myself would ever take Arabic lessons! Poor
young caliph! Now he must work or starve."

She added, aloud:

"In fact, you've been such a good teacher that I ought--well, haven't I
made great progress?"

He raised his eyes, and a bitter smile appeared on his gemlike lips.
He replied in Arabic:

"It is a difficult language, madam. Perhaps you understand what I am
saying now because I am speaking very simply and slowly. But you
yourself can speak only the most ordinary phrases; and I doubt if any
one but I could understand you. However, why should you trouble to
learn this language of mine? It always seemed folly to me. It is just
a part of this life, which has little meaning except to thoughtless
persons, and in which, to the wise, all events are like the shadows of
passing birds."

Her pride was affronted; and yet it was not as if an inferior had
rebuked her. He picked up his hat, a frightful confection of tan and
yellow straw, and the textbook out of which she had learned--in
heaven's name, why?--the facts that "el" and "al" are assimilated
before dentals, and that "elli" is omitted after general substantives.
Hamoud-bin-Said inclined his handsome head, while concluding:

"You will soon forget all you have learned from me, and I shall have
received your money for nothing." His impassiveness was deranged by a
look of chagrin, as he blurted out harshly: "I regret that the money
also has flown away, or I should insist----"

He held his head high, as if trying to rise above his feeling of
degradation.

Lilla stood looking at him thoughtfully from under the edge of a
verdigris-colored turban that matched the high collar of her walking
suit. She was reluctant to let him drift away to some obscure,
wretched fate, to which his native apathy would surely direct him. She
perceived in him again a certain relationship to herself, a
relationship due not only to his past good fortune, but also to
something in his character--perhaps some likeness of enthusiasm, or
even some identical kind of ardor, or else some weakness that had
ruined him but had not yet ruined her. So it was with a blush that she
suggested:

"See here, an invalid friend of mine is dissatisfied with the ma