Page:Tales of Today.djvu/90

74 When his piece was finished and a fair copy made upon a noble sheet of milk-white papyrus, with great initial letters in red ink and flourishes of gold, he knew not what to do, so put it in his sleeve and went forth to show his production to his friend Abdul, from whom he had no secrets.

On his way to Abdul's abode he passed the bazaar and entered the shop of the perfumer to obtain the flasks of attar of rose; there he found a beautiful lady, wrapped in a long white veil that concealed all her person excepting her left eye. That left eye incontinently betrayed to Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed the lady of the palanquin. His emotion was so great that he was compelled to support himself against the wall.

The lady of the white veil remarked Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed's trouble, and courteously inquired what ailed him and if, peradventure, he were unwell. Thereupon the merchant, the lady and Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed withdrew to the back-shop. A little negro brought a glass of snow-water upon a salver, of which Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed quaffed a few swallows.

"Why, pray tell me, hath the sight of me produced such an impression upon you?" the lady said in a sweet voice that betrayed a passably tender interest.

Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed told how he had beheld her near the mosque of Hassan the Sultan just as the curtains of her litter had been parted a little, and that since that moment he had been dying with love for her.

"Of a verity," said the lady, "and your passion was of such sudden birth as that? I had thought that love grew not so quickly. I am indeed the woman whom