“How did you amuse yourself all day?” he asked her as she sat on his knee, his arm round the flexible, supple waist pulsating under the silky web of her tunic.

“I was so happy.  I had so much to do, so much to think of,” she answered, gazing back into his eyes bent upon her, and eagerly drawing in their fire.  “I wandered in the compound and made garland after garland, then I sang to my rabab and practised my dancing.  In the heat I went in and slept on my lord’s bed dreaming of him—­ah! how I dreamt of him!” She broke off sighing, and those sighs fanned the blazing fires in the man’s veins.

“You were quite contented, then, with your day?”

“How could I not be contented when I had my lord to think about, his love of last night, his love of the coming night?”

Hamilton sighed and smiled at the same time.

“English wives need more than that to make them content,” he answered.

“English wives,” repeated Saidie, with her laugh like the sound of a golden bell; “what do they know of love?”

“Not much certainly, I think,” replied Hamilton.

For a moment the vision of a thin blonde face, with its expression of sour discontent, rose before him.  What had he not given that woman—­what had she not demanded?  Extravagant clothes to deck out her tall lean body, a carriage to drive her here and there, a mansion to live in, all the money he could gain by constant work—­these things she demanded because she was his wife, and he had given them, and yet she was always discontented, simply because she was one of those women who do not know desire nor the delight of it.  This one had nothing but that divine gift, and it made all her life joy.

“Dance for me now in the cool,” murmured Hamilton in the little fine curved ear with the rose-bud just over it.

Saidie slipped off his knee, and fastening the little gilt link at her neck more securely, drew her soft filmy garment more closely to her, and commenced to dance before him in the screened verandah, with the hot moonlight, filtered through the delicate tracery; of innumerable leaves falling on her smooth, warm-tinted body.

To please him, to please him, her lord, her owner, her king:  it was the one passion in her thoughts, and it flowed through every limb and muscle, glowed in her eyes, quivered on her parted lips, and made each movement a miracle of sweet sinuous grace.

The soft, hot night passed minute by minute, the scents of a thousand flowers mingled together in the still violet air.  Some white night-moths came and fluttered round the exquisite form on whose rounded contours the light played so softly, and Hamilton lay back in his chair, silent, absorbed, hardly drawing his breath through his lungs, shaken by the nervous beating of his heart.  Motionless he lay there, almost breathless, for the wine of life was in all his veins, mounting to his head, intoxicating him.