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 Allah's name that if she loved him he should obtain an undying soul, and how the task of obtaining her love had been laid upon him as a sort of atonement for having slain the Indian prince. But as he reflected he understood that this would probably estrange her all the more from him.

'Yet I can answer your question,' he said at last. 'What is love? It is that which is in me for you only.'

'But how am I to know what that is?' asked Zehowah, drawing up the smooth gold bracelets upon her arm and letting them fall down to her wrist, so that they jangled like a camel's bell.

'If you love me you will know,' Khaled answered, 'for then, perhaps, you will feel a tenth part of what I feel.'

'And why not all that you feel?' she asked, looking at him, but still playing with the bracelets.

'Because it is impossible for any woman to love as much as I love you, Zehowah.'

'You mean, perhaps, that a woman is too weak to love so well,' she suggested. 'And you think, perhaps, that we are weak because we sit all our lives upon the carpets in the harem eating sweetmeats, and listening to singing girls and to old women who tell us tales of long ago. Yet there have been strong women too—as strong as men. Kenda, who tore out the heart of Kamsa—was she weak?'