looking at the Princess. At length he said:
"It is true."

"I will give any price you ask for it," said the Princess.

"You!" said Safti. "But you--"

Suddenly he lifted his lean hands, took the face of the Princess between
them quite gently, and turned it towards the small window. She had
begun to tremble. Holding her soft cheeks with his brown fingers, Safti
remained motionless for a long time, during which it seemed to the
Princess that he was looking away from her at some distant object. She
watched his frightful and surreptitious eyes, that never told the truth,
she heard the distant Arab's everlasting song, and her dream became a
nightmare. At last Safti dropped his hands and said:

"It may be that some day you will need my emerald."

The Princess felt as if at that moment a bullet entered her heart.

"Give it me--give it me!" she cried. "I am rich. I------"

"I do not sell my medicines," Safti answered. "Those who use them must
live near me, here in Tunis. When they are healed they give back to me
the jewel that has saved them. But you--you live far off."

With the swiftness of a woman the Princess saw that persuasion would be
useless. Safti's face looked hard as brown wood. She seemed to recover
from her emotion, and said quietly:

"At least you will let me see the emerald?"

Safti went to a small bureau that stood at the back of the room, opened
one of its drawers with a key which he drew from beneath his dingy robe,
lifted a small silver box carefully out, returned to the Princess, and
put the box into her hand.

"Open it," he said.

She obeyed, and took out a very small and antique gold ring, in which
was set a rather dull emerald. Safti drew it gently from her, and put it
upon the forefinger of her left hand. It was so tiny that it would not
pass beyond the joint of the finger, and it looked ugly and odd upon the
Princess, who wore many beautiful rings. Now that she saw it she felt
the superstition that had sprung from her terror dying within her.
Safti, with his crooked eyes, must have read her thought in her face,
for he said:

"The Princess is wrong. That medicine could cure her. The one who wears
it for three months in each year can never be blind."

Taking the emerald from her finger, he touched her two eyes with it, and
it seemed to the Princess that, as he did so, the pain she felt in them
withdrew. Her desire for the jewel instantly returned.

"Let me wear it," she said, putting for