“My wedding gift,” said Hugh Carden Ali softly, then watched the crimson dye the white neck and surge across her face.  “You come—­to—­me—­for help.”  He repeated the words slowly.  “Then you, of course, are—­are free—­ah!” He leant forward and caught her hands.  “You have run away—­from what?  No, do not speak, I can read your answer in your face.  You have been hurt.”  He lifted the little ringless left hand, then pressed it against the other between his own, whilst a great light flamed in his eyes.  “You have come to me, and there is but one meaning for me in that you have come to me.  Is it------” His voice dropped to the softest whisper as he crushed her hands down upon the wooden couch so that she swayed towards him.  “Is it that I may fasten my own wedding gift into the bridal robe of the woman I love and will take to wife—­is it?”

Damaris bowed her head so that the curls danced and glistened in the light, as the torrent of his words, in the Egyptian tongue, swept about her like a flood.

“Hast thou come to me in love, thou dove from the nest?  Nay, what knowest thou of love?  I ask it not of thee—­yet—­but the seed I shall plant within thee shall grow in the passing of the days and the nights and the months and the years, until it is as a grove of perfumed flowers which shall change to golden fruit ready to the plucking of my hand.”

He pressed her little hands back against her breast so that the light fell full upon her face, and held her thus-wise, watching the colour rise and fade.

“Allah!” he whispered.  “Allah!  God of all, what have I done to deserve such signs of Thy great goodness?  Wilt love me?” He laughed gently.  “Canst thou look into mine eyes and shake thy golden head which shall be pillowed upon my heart—­my wife—­the mother of my children?  Look at me!  Look at me!  Ah! thine eyes, which were as the pools of Lebanon at night, are as a sun-kissed sea of love.  Thou know’st it not, but love is within thee—­for me, thy master.”

And was there not truth in what he said?  May there not have been love in the heart of the girl?

Not, maybe, the love which stands sweet and sturdy like the stocky hyacinth, to bloom afresh, no matter how often the flowers be struck, or the leaves be bruised, from the humdrum bulb deep in the soil of quiet content.  But the God-given, iridescent love of youth for youth, with its passion so swift, so sweet; a love like the rose-bud which hangs half-closed over the door in the dawn; which is wide-flung to the sun at noon; which scatters its petals at dusk.

The rose!

She has filled your days with the memory of her fragrance; her leaves still scent the night from out the sealed crystal vase which is your heart.

But, an’ you would attain the priceless boon of peace, see to it that a humdrum bulb be planted in the brown flower-pot which is your home.