he moiety with
souls. Ah, how poignantly sweet, how amazing, that which to her
American sisters was the usual, the commonplace, the everyday!

She raised her head. Her tears no longer flowed, but her lips still
quivered, in a pleading little smile; and her bosom still fluttered,
in a shy and doubting joy, and in her mind floated a half-formed
prayer that the genii whose craft had woven this rapturous dream,
would not too soon dispel it.

Mr. Middleton gazed at her. He had never seen a face like that, so
perfectly oval; never such vermillion as showed under the dusk of her
cheeks and stained the lips, narrow, but full. What wondrous eyes were
those, so large and lustrous, illumining features whose basal lines of
classic regularity were softly tempered into a fluent contour. A
circlet of gold coins bound her brow, shining in bright relief against
the luxuriant masses of chestnut hair. A delicate and slender figure
had she, yet well cushioned with flesh and no bones stood out in her
bare neck.

Moved not by his own discomfort on the hard floor, but by the possible
discomfort of the odalisque, Mr. Middleton at length raised her and
conducted her to a red plush sofa obtained by the landlady for soap
wrappers and a sum of money, which having turned green in places and
therefore become no longer suitable for a station in the parlor, had
been placed in this room a few days before. Upon this imposing article
of furniture the two sat down, and though at first Mr. Middleton did
no more than place his arm gently and reassuringly about the girl's
waist and hold her hand lightly, in the natural evolution,
progression, and sequence of events, following the rules of contiguity
and approach--rhetorical rules, but not so here--before long the cheek
of the fair Arab lay against that of the son of Wisconsin and her arm
was about his neck and every little while she uttered a little sigh of
complete, of unalloyed content. What had been yesterday, what might be
to-morrow, she was now happy. As for Mr. Middleton, what a stream of
delicious thoughts, delicious for the most part because of their
unselfishness and warm generosity, flowed through his head. What a joy
it would be to make happy the path of this girl who had been so
unhappy, to lay devotion at the feet of her who had never dreamed
there was such a thing in the world, to bind himself the slave of her
who had been a slave.

Then, too, he luxuriated in the simple, elementary joy of