General, adding, _au grand serieux_, "we won't
resort to duels unless absolutely necessary."

This sort of banter lasted so long that poor Mary's cheeks burned with
mixed vanity and mortification, and she made an excuse to leave us.

"And what does our Lieutenant advise monsieur to do?" asked the
General,--"to settle here, or to follow his escadron to the Desert?"
Whereupon the poor Lieutenant colored, and said nothing.

What an experience it was, that Christmas-day in the Desert! The noonday
sun seemed to dissolve in the warm atmosphere, and, instead of a single
orb shining overhead, large and golden, we had melted suns innumerable
about us, and almost lost the sense of corporeity in their charmed
medium.

When the short bright day waned, and the large stars were coming out one
by one, we found ourselves near home; and when the heavens had turned to
bluish-black, and the stars to splendid silvery moons, we passed under
the gate of Teschoun, and saw our shadows, darker and deeper than real
things, fall across the white walls of mosque and fortress. For shadow
and substance lost their identity in the Desert and one is always on the
point of mistaking the one for the other: if anything, shadow is the
more real of the two.

So absorbed was I in the suggestions of this mysterious beauty, that I
had forgotten all about my sister's lovers till we were fairly in our
little sitting-room. Then Mary began to sigh and blush, and to hint that
she thought we had better leave Teschoun very soon.

"You see, Tom, dear," she said, with tears in her eyes, "the General
says he adores me, and the Commandant says he never loved any one in the
world until he saw me, and the Capitaine says that if I go away he will
blow his brains out, and what am I to do?"

"And the Lieutenant,--what did he say?"

"He says nothing," said Mary, looking down; "and,"--here came a
sob,--"and I like him best of all!"

"But, if he does not declare the same liking for you, we must leave him
out of the question, and choose between the other three, I suppose."

"He does not speak because he is too modest: I'm sure he likes me," Mary
added, still ready to cry.

"His state of feeling does not help us much, unless expressed," I
replied. "Meantime, what am I to say to the General, the Commandant,
and the Capitaine, if they ask to marry you?"

The little thing plucked at the folds of her riding-skirt in the
greatest perplexity.

"I like the General and I