comes with presents and gold; and Ebbas Effendi, who is not
impervious to the influence of other gods than his own, permits her
into the sanctuary, where she shares with him the light of divine
revelation and returns to the States, as the Priestess of the Cult, to
bless and console the Faithful. Khalid was dining with Ahmed Bey at
the Grand Hotel--but here is a portion of the Letter.

By a devilish mischance she occupied the seat opposite to mine. And
in this trap of Iblis was decoy enough for a poor mouse like me. It is
an age since I beheld such an Oriental gem in an American setting; or
such a strange Southern beauty in an exotic frame. For one would think
her from the South, or further down from Mexico. Nay, of Andalusian,
and consequently of Arabian, origin she must be. Her hair and her eyes
are of the richest jet; her glance, voluptuous, mysterious; her
complexion, neither white nor olive, but partakes of both,--a
gauze-like shade of heliotrope, as it were, over a pink and straw
surface, if you can imagine that; and her expression, a play between
devotion and diabolism--now a question mark to love, now an
exclamation to sorrow, and at times a dash between both. By what
mysterious medium of romance and adventure did America produce such a
beauty, I can not tell. Perhaps she, too, can not. If you saw her, O
Shakib, you'd do nothing for months but dedicate odes to her eyes,--to
the deep, dark infinity of their luring, devouring beauty,--which seem
to drop honey and poison from every arched hair of their fulsome
lashes. Withal,--another devilish mischance,--she was dressed in black
and wore a white silk ruffle, like myself. And her age? Well, she can
not have passed her sixth lustrum. And really, as the Novelist would
say in his Novel, she looks ten years younger.... To say we were
attracted to each other were presumptuous: but _I was_ taken.... Near
her sat a Syrian gentleman of my acquaintance, with whom she was
conversing when we entered. That is the lady whose beauty, when she
was sitting, I described to you: but when she got up to leave the
table,--alas, and _ay me_, and all the other expressions of regret and
sorrow. That such a beautiful face should be denied a corresponding
beauty of figure. And what is more pitiable about her, she is lame in
the right leg. Poor dear Misfortune, I wish it were in my power to add
an inch of my limb to hers.

And Khalid goes on limping, drooling, alassing, to the end. After
d