Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/184

 the uneasy Armenian, “our Gulabian likes not the dice box, being a man faithfully mated to his swollen purse, and sacrificing daily to the swag-bellied god of compound interest. Nor does he care for ardent spirits, being in that respect—and in that respect only!—like a True Believer. But—ahee!—the desire of woman smells sweetly, pungently, intoxicatingly in his nostrils!”

“Indeed!” the old nurse took up the tale. “The desire of woman! Our Gulabian knows not the truth of the saying that the beauty of the nightingale is its song, science the beauty of an ugly man, forgiveness the beauty of a devotee, and the beauty of a decent man steadfastness in love. Shameless dancing girls from the stinking, yellow Southland—bold-eyed, red-haired hussies from Georgia and the Caucasus—raven-locked maidens from Bokhara—in a never-ending procession, they dance across the heart of our Gulabian. They sweep with perfumed fingers the impetuous harp strings of his soul. And,” she went on mercilessly, while the Armenian stammered and blushed, while Koom Khan guffawed crudely, and even Hector, for all his preoccupation, joined in the merriment, “there was talk, at the time of the Ameer's death, of one Jayashri, a golden-skinned beauty from far Bengal. 'Sister,' the Babu Bansi called her—but a naughty sister she was, finding but little joy in sisterly devotion, in minding her fat and indecent brother's household pots, but instead whispering words of sweetness and love and soft passion into the ear of our …”

“Peace, Leaky-Tongue!” cut in the Armenian, thoroughly