She looked up and then down; she stared out into the sun-flooded garden and laughed softly.  “Even princesses dream,” she demurely acknowledged, and thought the line and her fleet, meaning glance went very well with this mad opera-bouffe which fate was forcing her to play.

Kerissen seemed to think that went very well, too, for his flashing teeth acknowledged his pleasure in her aptness; then his smile faded and she felt him studying her over his cigarette, studying her averted gaze, the bright color in her cheeks, the curves of her lips, and he was puzzled and perturbed by the sweet, baffling beauty of her.  A wild elation began to swell his heart.  His eyes glowed, his blood burned with the triumph, not so much of his daring capture of her, but of the flattering tribute that her pretty ways were paying toward his personality alone.  Wary as he was, cynical of subterfuge, he did not penetrate her guard.  His monstrous vanity whispered eager flattery in his ears.

And still he continued to stare at her, finding her unbelievably lovely.  “My grandfather would call you an houri from paradise,” he told her, the warmth of admiration deepening in his eyes.

“And your grandfather’s grandson knows that I am only an houri from America!...  But that is paradise for houris!”

“And not for men, no!...  Sometimes I have wished that those English would restore in me that young belief in the heaven of the Prophet,” he continued, smiling, “and now that wish is granted.  It is here, that paradise,” and his smile, flashing about the lonely garden, came to dwell again upon the girl before him.

She laughed.  “But does one houri make a paradise?” she bantered, while the beating, hurrying heart of her went faster and faster till she thought his ears would hear it.  “We have a proverb—­one swallow does not make a summer.”

“Cela depend—­that depends upon the houri....  When you are that one it is paradise indeed.”  He leaned toward her, speaking softly, but with a voice that thrilled more and more in its own eloquence.

She was the Rose of Desire, he reminded her, and beside her all other flowers drooped in envy.  She was as lovely as young Dawn to the eyes of men.  She was the ravishing embodiment of gaiety and youth and delight.  He quoted from the poets, not from his own Oriental poets, but snatches from Campion and Wilde, vowing that

          “There was a garden in her face,
          Where roses and white lilies grow,”

and adding, with points of fire dancing in his heavy lidded eyes,

          “Her neck is like white melilote,
          Flushing for pleasure of the sun,”

and went on to add praise to praise and extravagance to extravagance, till a sudden little imp of mirth caught Arlee by the throat, hysterically choking her.  “I shall never like praise or poetry or—­or men again,” she thought, struggling between wild laughter and hot disgust, while aloud she mocked, “Ah, you know too much poetry, Captain Kerissen!  I do not recognize myself at all!  You are laughing at me!”