at do you say? Can we buy
something with that? Yes or no?"

He looked at her triumphantly, and she eagerly replied: "Yes, yes indeed;
and in our country I think something worth having."

"And we--you and I--we will begin a quite new life. I was seventeen when
I first set out with my master, and I was twenty-six last midsummer. How
many years wandering does that make?"

They both thought this over for some time; then Mandane said doubtfully

"If I am not mistaken it is eight."

"I believe it is nine," he exclaimed. "Let us see. Here, give me your
little paw! There, I begin with seventeen, that is where I started. First
your little-finger--what a mite of a thing, and then the rest." He took
her right hand and counted off her fingers till he ended with the last
finger of the left. The result puzzled him; he shook his head, saying:
"There are ten fingers on both hands, sure enough, and yet it cannot be
ten years; it is nine at most I know."

He began the counting, which he liked uncommonly, all over again; but
with the same result. Mandane said it was but nine, she had counted it up
herself; and he agreed, and declared that her little fingers must be
bewitched. And this game would have gone on still longer but that she
remembered that the seventeen must not be included at all, and that he
ought to begin with eighteen. Rustem could not immediately take this in,
and even when he admitted it he did not release her hand, but went on
with gay resolution:

"And you see, my girl, I mean to keep this little hand--you may pull it
away if you choose--but it is mine, and the pretty little maid, and all
that belongs to it. And I will take you and both your hands, bewitched
fingers and all, home with me. There they may weave and stitch as much as
you like; but as man and wife no one shall part us, and we will lead a
life such a life! The joys of Paradise shall be no better than a rap on
the skull with an olive-wood log in comparison!"

He tried to take her hand again, but she drew it away, saying in deep
confusion and without looking up: "No, Rustem. I was afraid yesterday
that it would come to this; but it can never, never be. I am
grateful--oh! so grateful; but no, it cannot be, and that must be the end
of it. I can never be your wife. Rustem."

"No?" he asked with a scowl, and the veins swelled in his low forehead.
"Then you have been making a fool of me!--as to the gratitude you talk
of. . . ."

He stood up in hot excite