This break in the giddy circle of fashionable dissipation, afforded quite a new happiness to Kondje-Gul and me. In the course of her initiation into the refinements of our life, her exotic charms had acquired some new and indescribable embellishments. We spent many a long evening alone together in that delightful privacy which affords the sweetest opportunities for communion between loving hearts, and we grew to feel like a modern Darby and Joan. I was quite proud of my handiwork, and contemplated with joy this pure and ideal being whose nature I had inspired, whose soul and whose heart I had moulded. The cultivation of this young and virgin mind, as I may be permitted to call it, so possessed by its Oriental beliefs, had produced a charming contrast of enthusiasm and calm reason which imparted a most original effect to her frank utterances of new ideas. I was often quite surprised to find in her mingled with her Asiatic superstitions, and transformed as it were by contact with a simpler faith, the substance of my own private sentiments and of my wildest aspirations. One might really think that she had borrowed her thoughts, nay, her very life, as it were, from me, and that her tender emotions had their source in my own heart. Our happiness seemed so assured, and we had it so completely under our own control, that it would have appeared absurd for us to imagine it to be at the mercy of Fate. Still, in the midst of this tranquillity there sometimes arose in my mind an anxious thought. Light clouds floated across my clear azure sky, and often, as I sat by her side, I began to think, in spite of myself, about the future--about this marriage of which you yourself have reminded me, and from the obligations to which nothing could save me. However great the sacrifice might be, I could not even think of failing to carry out my uncle's wishes in this matter. My heart bound me to this adoptive father who had placed unlimited faith in my loyalty: my whole life was pledged to this chivalrous benefactor who had left all his fortune in my hands, nor could I permit the least suspicion of ingratitude on my part to pass over his mind. But melancholy as was the recollection of this duty to which I had resigned myself, I must confess that, after all, this impression was but a fugitive one. I no longer attempted to struggle against the temptation to a compromise, by means of which I had determined to reconcile my passion for Kondje-Gul with my marital duties to Anna Campbell. The retiring nature of the latter would surely permit our union to be treated as one of those arrangements known as _mariages de convenance_, and my charming romantic connection with Kondje-Gul would always remain a secret. Moreover, my uncle, should he ever discover this after-match of my oriental life, was certainly not the man to be seriously scandalised at it, directly he assured himself that "the respectabilities" had not been violated.