The girl shook her head with a quick negation.

“No, I have only been here a few days—­a week, I think.  Did you notice that old woman as we came through here?  I belong to her; she taught me to dance.  She brought me here, and I dance for the Nothing, but I have never taken any one like this before.  The other girls do, every night, but each night the Nothing said to me, ’No one here to-night, good enough.  Wait till an English Sahib comes.’”

Hamilton listened with a paling cheek; his breath came and went faintly; he hardly seemed to draw it; he put his next question very gently, watching her open brow and proud, fearless eyes.

“Do you know nothing of men at all, then?”

“Nothing, Sahib, nothing,” she answered, falling on her knees suddenly at his feet, and raising her hands towards him.  “This will be my bridal night with the Sahib.  The Nothing told me to please you, to do all you told me.  What shall I do? how shall I please you?”

Hamilton looked down upon her:  his brain seemed whirling; the pulses along his veins beat heavily; new worlds, new vistas of life seemed opening before him as he looked at her, so beautiful in her first youth, in her unclouded innocence, full, it is true, of Oriental passion, with a certain Oriental absence of shame, but untouched, able to be his, and his only.

Before he could speak again, or collect his thoughts that the girl’s words had scattered, her soft voice went on: 

“Surely the Sahib is a god, not a man.  I have seen the men across the footlights:  there were none like the Sahib.  I said to my mother, ‘I do not like men, I do not want them; what shall I do?’ And my mother said, ’There is no hurry, my child; we will wait till a rich Sahib comes.’  But you are not a man, you must be a god, you are so beautiful; and I am the slave of the Sahib, for ever and ever.”

She looked up at him, great lights seemed to have been lighted in the midnight pools of her eyes, the curved lips parted a little, showing the perfect, even teeth; the rounded, warm-hued cheeks glowed; the lids of her eyes lifted as those of a person looking out into a new world.

Hamilton stood looking at her, and two great seas of conflicting emotions swept into his brain, and under their tumult he remained irresolute.  Mere instincts and nature, the common impulse of the male to take his pleasure whenever offered, prompted him to draw her to his breast and let her learn the great joy of life in his arms; but some higher feeling held him back:  the knowledge that the first way in which a woman learns these things colours her whole after estimation of them, restrained him.

Here he saw, suddenly, there was new ground for Love to build himself a habitation upon.  Should it be but a rude shanty, loosely constructed of Desire?  Was it not rather such a fair and lovely site that it was worthy a perfect temple, built and finished with delicate care?