nvious veil, and see the
radiant beauty that never again would be shrouded, and to meet once more
the lips which his own had touched before but in one single caress; he
bowed his head, and I thought that my disinterested ungrudging
friendship made the friendships of antiquity look small; when----an oath
that chilled my blood rang through the night and over the seas,
startling the echoes from rock and hill; the veiled captive reeled from
the saddle with a wailing scream, hurled to earth by the impetus with
which his arms loosed her from him; and away into the night, without
word or sign, plunging headlong down the dark defile, riding as men may
ride from a field that reeks with death, far out of sight into the heart
of the black dank woods, his Syrian bore Sir Galahad. And lo! in the
white moonlight, against the luminous sea, slowly there rose before me,
unveiled and confessed--THE NEGRESS!

* * * * *

The history of that night we never learnt. Whether Leilah Derran herself
played the cruel trick on her Giaour lover (but this _he_ always
scouted), whether Omar himself was a man of grim humor, whether the
Abyssinian, having betrayed her mistress, was used as a decoy-bird,
dressed like the Circassian, to lure the infidels into the rose-gardens
where the Faithful intended to dispatch them hastily to Eblis--no one
knows. We could never find out. The negress escaped me before my
surprise let me stay her, and the fray made the place too hot for close
investigation. Nor do I know where Galahad tore in that wild night-ride,
whose spur was the first maddened pain and rage of shame that his life
had tasted. I never heard where he spent the six days of his absence;
but when he joined us again, six weeks in the sick-wards would not have
altered him more; all he said to me was one piteous phrase--"For God's
sake don't tell the fellows!"--and I never did; I liked him well enough
not to make chaff of him. Unholily had I thirsted to see him
disenchanted, ungenerously had I pined to see him goaded out of temper:
I had my wish, and I don't think I enjoyed it. I saw him at last in
passion that I had much to do to tame down from a deadly vengeance that
would have rung through the Allied Armies; and I saw him loathe the
East, curse romance, burn all the poets with Hafiz at their head, and
shun a woman's beauty like the pestilence. To this day I believe that
the image of Leilah Derran haunts his memory, and tha