my master, my comrades, my acquaintance, Moharib, Zahra' herself, now seemed to me an impossible thing. A curse was on me; fly I must; and my flight instinctively, for till the first glimpse of the open plain a full hour later aroused me to such considerations, I made no account of the why and wherefore,took the direction of Mardeen.

"A dreary ride it was, full of anxiety and remorse, full of the worst misgivings, the apprehension of countless evils and dangers, some real, some imaginary, but figured as real; and myself accountable for all. A corpse in the grass, a broken heart in the dwelling, anger, shame, hatred, confusion, filled up my backward view; before, everything was doubtful, perilous, and dark. Now, too, returned to my memory the happiness known so lately at Diar-Bekr: that garden, that room, that torrent bed, those meetings,

those looks, those words, the warmth of her hand in mine, the touch of her cheek; but all wore a different aspect, all was gloom and wormwood to my soul. I condemned myself for a seducer and a villain; yet had any one questioned me in what I was a villain or a seducer, I should have been at a loss for a reasonable answer. The sky was one leaden cloud-vault above; there was no star to guide or cheer me in sight.

"But worst of all to bear was the thought of the barrier that my own acts, for mine they were, had raised between my love and myself; a barrier over which I could then see no passing. I saw her, how near yet how far!-bravely keeping her own against parents, friends, relatives, suitor; hemmed in on every side by difficulties, pressed by every motive of affection, modesty, fear, by persuasion, by threats, by authority, by force perhaps; and

amid these faithful to her given word, and waiting night after night, day after day, waiting vainly for my re-appearance, and the fulfilment of my plighted promise,—in vain, in vain! This thought was torment indeed; hell, did hell exist, could have no worse; for in the imagined hell of story there would be no love, and love has cunning torments unknown to any but himself in any world. And thus they tortured me :

"I think of those I left behind,
Not those I see before me;
A sudden pang contracts my mind,
A shadow darkens o'er me.
Of love unquited, left to wait

Far off, a chance returning;
Drear road, and shadow-haunted gate,
And hopeless hopes of yearning.

"This have I found life's saddest curse,
That love is still unequal,

To take the better, give the worse,
With sundrance in the sequel.

And poise the scales, as poise we try,
The balance will not even ;—

"A pitiable case yours was indeed," observed Tanţawee; "but, honestly, I cannot call it quite undeserved. You were, to speak the plain truth, only reaping what you yourself had sown. My dear Aḥmed, intrigues like those which you had then been pursuing with such intemperate eagerness,-excuse me, but I am only using your own words,-could hardly have a different result; and, boy though you were, you knew, or ought to have known, that you and she too were playing with edge-tools of a particularly dangerous description. At best you were wasting time and energy that might have been more usefully employed; besides putting your own hands, and those of your

fellow-players, in imminent risk of very ugly

cuts."

Hermann said nothing; Tantawee went on. "What right, again, had you, Aḥmed, to step in between a girl and her family, a betrothed girl too, and you a stranger and a dependant on others; and to encourage her in meetings and schemes which placed her every moment on the brink of dishonour, or worse? She, indeed, seems to me, to have been, if not better principled, at any rate wiser than you, and to have known where to stop, or rather to make you stop. I honour her for it. But as for you, you were simply a young pleasure-hunting scamp, determined on the gratification of your fancies, lawful or unlawful, with all their consequences; likely enough anyhow to be worse for her than for you.'

"You are too hard on us both," at last answered Hermann, roused, as his friend