ocks at the door of her studio
one evening and enters. Ah, this then is a studio! "I am destined to
know everything, and to see everything," he says to himself, smiling
in his heart.

The charming hostess, in a Japanese kimono receives him somewhat
orientally, offering him the divan, which he occupies alone for a
spell. He is then laden with a huge scrap-book containing press
notices and reviews of her many novels. These, he is asked to go
through while she prepares the tea. Which is a mortal task for the
Dervish in the presence of the Enchantress. Alas, the tea is long in
the making, and when the scrap-book is laid aside, she reinforces him
with a lot of magazines adorned with stories of the short and long and
middling size, from her fertile pen. "These are beautiful," says he,
in glancing over a few pages, "but no matter how you try, you can not
with your pen surpass your own beauty. The charm of your literary
style can not hold a candle to the charm of your--permit me to read
your hand." And laying down the magazine, he takes up her hand and
presses it to his lips. In like manner, he tries to read somewhat in
the face, but the Enchantress protests and smiles. In which case the
smile renders the protest null and void.

Henceforth, the situation shall be trying even to the Dervish who can
eat live coals. He oscillates for some while between the Medium and
the Enchantress, but finds the effort rather straining. The first
climax, however, is reached, and our Scribe thinks it too sad for
words. He himself sheds a few rheums with the fair-looking,
fair-spoken Dame, and dedicates to her a few rhymes. Her magnanimity,
he tells us, is unexampled, and her fatalism pathetic. For when Khalid
severs himself from the Spiritual Household, she kisses him thrice,
saying, "Go, Child; Allah brought you to me, and Allah will bring you
again." Khalid refers, as usual, to the infinite wisdom of the
Almighty, and, taking his handkerchief from his pocket, wipes the
tears that fell--from her eyes over his. He passes out of the
vestibule, silent and sad, musing on the time he first stood there as
a beggar.

Now, the horizon of the Enchantress is unobstructed. Khalid is there
alone; and her free love can freely pass on from him to another. And
such messages they exchange! Such evaporations of the insipidities of
free love! Khalid again takes up with Shakib, from whom he does not
conceal anything. The epistles are read by both, and sometime