d there you will find music made
flesh, and flesh made music." Then she was gone.

The soul of the priest had been in torment heretofore, but chaos
engulfed it during the hours that followed. He was like a man bereft
of reason; he burned with fever, yet his whole frame shook as from a
wintry wind. He prayed, or tried to, but his eyes beheld no vision
save a waiting Moorish maid with hair like night, his stammering
tongue gave forth no Latin, but repeated o'er and o'er her parting
promise:

"There you will find music made flesh and flesh made music."

He realized that the foul fiend had him by the throat, and undertook
to cast him off; but all the time he knew that when the moon came,
bringing with it the cadence of a song, he would go, even though his
going led to perdition. And go he did, groveling in his misery. His
sandals spurned the rocky path when he heard the voice of Zahra
sighing through the branches; then, when he had reached the castle
wall, he saw her bending toward him from the balcony above.

"I come to you," she whispered; and an instant later her form showed
white against the blackness of the low stone door in front of him.
There, in the gloom, for one brief instant, her yielding body met his,
her hands reached upward and drew his face down to her own; then out
from his hungry arms she glided, and with rippling laughter fled into
the blackness.

"Zahra!" he cried.

"Come!" she whispered, and when he hesitated, "Do you fear to follow?"

"Zahra!" he repeated; but his voice was strange, and he tore at the
cloth that bound his throat, stumbling after her, guided only by her
voice.

Always she was just beyond his reach; always she eluded him; yet never
did he lose the perfume of her presence nor the rustle of her silken
garments. Over and over he cried her name, until at last he realized
from the echo of his calling that he had come into a room of great
dimensions and that the girl was gone.

For an instant he was in despair, until her voice reached him from
above:

"I do but test you, Christian priest. I am waiting."

"'Flower of the World,'" he stammered, hoarsely. "Whence lead the
stairs?"

"And do you love me, then?" she queried, in a tone that set him all
ablaze.

"Zahra," he repeated, "I shall perish for want of you."

"How do you measure this devotion?" she insisted, softly. "Will it
cool with the dawn, or are you mine in truth forever and all time?"

"I have no thought save that o