Page:Tales of Today.djvu/99

Rh grazing my neck," said she, smiling and passing her hand over the faint red mark that the eunuch's blade had left behind it. "Take me for your slave; I will devote to you the life for which I am indebted to you. You will always have a shoulder on which to rest your elbow, and my hair will serve to wipe the dust from your sandals."

As is the case with all men who devote their attention to poetry and literature, Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed was of a very compassionate disposition. Leila, as the fugitive slave was called, used choice language to express her thoughts and was young and beautiful, and had this not been so, humanity would not have allowed him to drive her from his door. He designated to the young slave a corner of the room where there were a Persian carpet and some silken cushions, and upon the edge of the estrade a little collation of dates, candied cedrats and conserve of roses of Constantinople which he, distraught as he was and busied with his reflections, had not touched, and further, two jars of the porous clay of Thebes for imparting coolness to the water, standing in saucers of Japanese porcelain and covered with pearly beads of dew. Having thus provided temporarily for Leila's comfort, he mounted again to his terrace to finish his nargile and find the concluding rhymes for the ghazel that he was composing in honor of the princess Ayesha, a ghazel in which the lilies of Iran, the flowers of Gulistan, the stars and all the constellations of the heavens were quarreling among themselves to be allowed the honor of a place.

The next morning, as soon as it was day, Mahmoud-Ben-Ahmed reflected that he had no sachet