For two of these restless hours she had put on and discarded the garments within her cupboards, until she had found that which she desired.  And an hour she had spent likewise in the adorning of her beauty, before she stood satisfied in front of her mirror.  The voluminous trousers of softest black fabric, hardly revealing the exquisite whiteness of her perfect limbs, were caught by heavy golden anklets above the little feet, with henna-tipped toes and reddened heel.

Her bare waist shone like a strip of creamy satin above the belt and stomacher of black leather encrusted in black pearls, her arms were bare, also the supple back and glistening shoulders, but the rounded glory of her breasts was hidden by a covering of soft interlaced ribbon, sewn with pearls.  Her hair wound round and round her head, and, fastened by great combs, shone like a golden globe, and over it she had thrown a flimsy veil, and around her a swinging cloak.

There was no touch of paint upon her face, nor did she, with the exception of her anklets, wear loose jewels, or the ornaments which cause that nerve-breaking clatter so beloved by the Eastern woman, and so superlatively irritating to the Western ear.  In fact she was the most ravishing picture of delight imaginable, her first shyness and awkwardness of her unaccustomed attire having long since vanished, though, be it confessed, that until this night she had never intended that human eye should rest upon her loveliness.

But the earth of discontent and the waters of loneliness make fertile soil for the seeds of fear, even if those seeds be planted by the hand of a misshapen slave; but a little smile and a sigh of satisfaction had been the outcome of a prolonged scrutiny in a mirror, before which she had stood whilst quoting certain words which ran thusly: 

“Beautiful as the dawn, rounded as the bursting lotus bud.”  And then she had shrugged her glistening shoulders and frowned, and smiled again, before stretching her long arms towards the silken curtains which, though she knew it not, gently blew against the figure of a man, who, prone upon his face, clenched his fingers in the soft stuff, striving to quieten the mad beating of his heart at the sound of the footsteps or the rustle of the raiment of the woman he loved, yea, and desired.

“Hahmed!  Oh, Hahmed!”

As faint as the rose of the breaking dawn, as tender as the notes of a cooing dove calling gently to its mate, as soft as the touch of a flower-petal the words drifted through the curtain.  With a whispered cry to Allah, his God, the man was upon his feet.  With the strength of the oriental, which has its root in patience and its flower in achievement in all that appertains to love, he had uncomplainingly waited through month succeeding month, making no effort to further his cause by either word or movement, content to leave the outcome to the Fate which had inscribed upon the unending, non-beginning rolls of eternity the moment when that voice should break across the desert place in which lay his seed of love.