And then he knelt beside her, covering her gleaming nakedness with the cloak, and spoke softly in the Eastern tongue.

“I leave you, woman, to go and give orders for your journey to Cairo.  There shall you become my wife, my woman, for behold, I will no longer wait.

“Let not your thoughts dwell upon caprice or tricks of woman, for if you say me nay, yet will I make you my wife, and force you unto me.  But you will not gainsay me, for behold you love me, so rest upon your bed for the three weeks which must pass before the caravan is ready for the journey, so that in health and strength and surpassing loveliness you will come to me.”

And having knelt to kiss the rosy feet, he withdrew from the presence of his beloved, and the English girl turned on her face and sobbed, and then, gathering her cloak around her so as to hide the dishevelment of her raiment, passed to the roof above to hold conclave with the stars.

CHAPTER XXX

It seems wellnigh impossible that an English maid could look with such equanimity upon the prospect of marriage with a man, an Eastern, of whom she knew nothing outside the tales and anecdotes recounted to her of his exploits and prowess, the which stood good to rival even the adventures of Haroun al Raschid.

As if an English girl, you will say, could ever dream of such a thing—­a girl brought up in England’s best society!

True! brought up within a wall of convention, with her ears for ever filled with the everlasting tag, “It’s not done, you know,” that shibboleth which for stultifying all original effort surpasses even the mythical but revered sway of Mrs. Grundy.  A girl whose brain, and originality, and deep passions, must under the said circumstances and environment inevitably culminate in the same silver-haired, pink-cheeked, grandchildren-adoring old lady, who sees the regulation ending in England of the brilliant girl, just as she sees the end of the girl whose brain registers the fact that the seaside is a place to be visited only in August; whose originality finds vent in the different coloured ribbons with which she adorns her dogs and her lingerie; whose passions—­oh well! who bothers about the little placid stream flowing without a ripple between the mud flats of that drear country habit?

No doubt about it, if money troubles had not given her the opportunity for which she had always craved, Jill would have finally metamorphosed her brilliant self into that dear old dame who is as beloved and ubiquitous and uniform as the penny bun.  But seeing her chance she had clutched at it with eager out-stretched hands, and in all these months she had not had one single regret, or one moment of longing for peaceful, grey-tinted England, or the friends with whom she had visited and hunted and done the hundred and one trivial things wealthy beautiful girls are