e lines of Sadi, when he
says: "Such was this delicate crescent of the moon, and fascination of
the holy, this form of an angel, and decoration of a peacock, that let
them once behold her, and continence must cease to exist in the
constitutions of the chaste."

This rebuke might have been called forth by the presence of another
guest at the board. Be that as it may, the eyes of the Father of Swords
glimmered perceptibly when they rested on the unannounced visitor for
whom he fished out, with his own henna'ed fingers, the fattest morsels
of mutton and the juiciest sweets. I hasten to add that the newcomer was
not the one whose earlier arrival and interview with the Father of
Swords has already been recorded. He was, nevertheless, a personage not
unknown to this record, whether as Senhor Magin of Brazil or as the
emissary of the Shah of the Shahs of _Firengistan_. For not only had he
felt impelled to bid good-by a second time to his friend Adolf Ganz,
prince among the merchants of Shustar. He had even postponed his voyage
down the Karun long enough to make one more journey overland to Bala
Bala. And he heard there, not without interest, the story of the short
visit and the sudden flight of the young Englishman he had accidentally
met on the river.

As for Matthews, he celebrated the coronation at Dizful, in bed. And by
the time he had slept off his fag, Bala Bala and the Father of Swords
and the green chest and the ingenious Magin looked to him more than
ever like figures of myth. He was too little of the timber out of which
journalists, romancers, or diplomats are made to take them very
seriously. The world he lived in, moreover, was too solid to be shaken
by any such flimsy device as the one of which he had happened to catch a
glimpse. What had been real to him was that he, Guy Matthews, had been
suspected of playing a part in story-book intrigues, and had been
treated rudely by an old barbarian of whom he expected the proverbial
hospitality of the East. His affair had therefore been to show Mr.
Scarlet Beard that if a Lur could turn his back, an Englishman could do
likewise. He now saw, to be sure, that he himself had not been
altogether the pattern of courtesy. But the old man of the mountain had
got what was coming to him. And Matthews regretted very little, after
all, missing what he had gone to see. For Dizful, peering at him through
the arches of the bridge, reminded that there was still something to
see.

It