when the two small, black pages lately dispatched in such haste by Sah-luma returned, each one bearing a huge gilded bowl filled with rose water, together with fine cloths, lace-fringed, and soft as satin.

Kneeling humbly down, one before Theos, the other before Sah-luma, they lifted these great, shining bowls on their heads, and remained motionless.  Sah-luma dipped his face and hands in the cool, fragrant fluid,—­Theos followed his example,—­and when these light ablutions were completed, the pages disappeared, coming back almost immediately with baskets of loose rose-leaves, white and red, which they scattered profusely about the room.  A delightful odor subtly sweet, and yet not faint, began to freshen the already perfumed air,—­and Sah-luma, flinging himself again on his couch, motioned Theos to take a similar resting-place opposite.

He at once obeyed, yielding anew to the sense of indolent luxury and voluptuous ease his surroundings engendered,—­and presently the aroma of rising incense mingled itself with the scent of the strewn rose-petals,—­the pages had replenished the incense-burner, and now, these duties done so far, they brought each a broad, long stalked palm-leaf, and placing themselves in proper position, began to fan the two young men slowly and with measured gentleness, standing as mute as little black statues, the only movement about them being the occasional rolling of their white eyeballs and the swaying to and fro of their shiny arms as they wielded the graceful, bending leaves.

“This is the way a poet should ever live!” murmured Theos, glancing up from the soft cushions among which he reclined, to Sah-luma, who lay with his eyes half-closed and a musing smile on his beautiful mouth—­“Self centered in a circle of beauty,—­with naught but fair suggestions and sweet thoughts to break the charm of solitude.  A kingdom of happy fancies should be his, with gates shut last against unwelcome intruders,—­gates that should never open save to the conquering touch of woman’s kiss! ... for the master-key of love must unlock all doors, even the doors of a minstrel’s dreaming!”

“Thinkest thou so?” said Sah-luma lazily, turning his dark, delicate head slightly round on his glistening, pale-rose satin pillow—­“Nay, of a truth there are times when I could bar out women from my thoughts as mere disturbers of the translucent element of poesy in which my spirit bathes.  There is fatigue in love, . . whose pretty human butterflies too oft weary the flower whose honey they seek to drain.  Nevertheless the passion of love hath a certain tingling pleasure in it, . .  I yield to it when it touches me, even as I yield to all other pleasant things,—­but there are some who unwisely carry desire too far, and make of love a misery instead of a pastime.  Many will die for love,—­fools are they all!  To die for fame, . . for glory, . . that I can understand, . . but for love! ...” he laughed, and taking up a crushed rose-petal he flipped it into the air with his finger and thumb—­“I would as soon die for sake of that perished leaf as for sake of a woman’s transient beauty!”