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In this imprecation there was a piece of grave injustice which Mr. Middleton would not have allowed himself in calmer mood, for the emir was about to become a member of one of the largest and most fashionable Presbyterian congregations in the city and ought not to have been included in an anathema of Moslemry and condemned for anything he upheld while in the benighted condition of Mohammedanism.

Mr. Middleton continuing to gaze, as who could not, upon that beautiful unhappy face, suddenly he imprinted upon the quivering lips a kiss in which was the tender sympathy of a mother, the heartening encouragement of a friend, and the ardent passion of a lover. The odalisque opened her lovely hazel eyes and seeing corroboration of all the touch of the kiss had told her, as she looked into eyes that brimmed with tears like hers, upon lips that quivered like hers, she let loose the flood gates of her woes in a torrent of sobs and tears, and throwing herself upon his shoulders, poured out her long pent sorrows in a good cry.

It was only a summer shower and the sun soon shone. She did not weep long. Too filled with wonder and surpassing delight was this daughter of the Orient in her first experience with the chivalry of the Occident. She must needs look again at this man whose eyes had welled full in compassion for her. She would court again his light and soothing caresses, his gentle ministrations, so different from the brutal pawing of the male animals of her own race, the moiety with souls. Ah, how poignantly sweet, how amazing, that which to her American sisters was the usual, the commonplace, the everyday!

She raised her head. Her tears no longer flowed, but her lips still quivered, in a pleading little smile; and her bosom still fluttered, in a shy and doubting joy, and in her mind floated a half-formed prayer that the genii whose craft had woven this rapturous dream, would not too soon dispel it.

Mr. Middleton gazed at her. He had never seen a face like that, so perfectly oval; never such vermillion as showed under the dusk of her cheeks and stained the lips, narrow, but full. What wondrous eyes were those, so large and lustrous, illumining features whose basal lines of classic regularity were softly tempered into a fluent contour. A circlet of gold coins bound her brow, shining in bright relief against the luxuriant masses of chestnut hair. A delicate and slender figure had she, yet well cushioned with flesh and no bones stood out in her bare neck.

Moved not by his own discomfort on the hard floor, but by the possible discomfort of the odalisque, Mr. Middleton at length raised her and conducted her to a red plush sofa obtained by the landlady for soap wrappers and a sum of money, which having turned green in places and therefore become no longer suitable for a station in the parlor, had been placed in this room a few days before. Upon this imposing article of furniture the two sat down, and though at first Mr. Middleton did no more than place his arm gently and reassuringly about the girl’s waist and hold her hand lightly, in the natural evolution, progression, and sequence of events, following the rules of contiguity and approach–rhetorical rules, but not so here–before long the cheek of the fair Arab lay against that of the son of Wisconsin and her arm was about his neck and every little while she uttered a little sigh of complete, of unalloyed content. What had been yesterday, what might be to-morrow, she was now happy. As for Mr. Middleton, what a stream of delicious thoughts, delicious for the most part because of their unselfishness and warm generosity, flowed through his head. What a joy it would be to make happy the path of this girl who had been so unhappy, to lay devotion at the feet of her who had never dreamed there was such a thing in the world, to bind himself the slave of her who had been a slave.