As the afternoon aged he began to fear that he had frightened her, and therefore when he came to tread his homeward path it was with a strange commingling of eagerness and of dread. But while still at a distance, he heard her singing as usual, and, nearing the spot, he stopped to drink in her message. Again the maiden sang of love; again the monk felt his spirit leaping as she fed his starving soul even more adroitly than she fingered the vibrant strings. At last her wild, romantic verses became more unrestrained; the music quickened until, regardless of all things, Fray Joseph burst the thicket asunder and stood before her, huge, exalted, palpitant. "I, too, have sung those songs," he panted, hoarsely. "That melody has lived in me since time began; but I am mute. And you? Who are you? What miracle bestowed this gift--?" He paused, for with the ending of the song his frenzy was dying and his eyes were clearing. There, casting back his curious gaze, was a bewitching Moorish maid whose physical perfection seemed to cause the very place to glow. The slanting sunbeams shimmered upon her silken garments; from her careless hand drooped an instrument of gold and of tortoise-shell, an instrument strange to the eyes of the monk. Her feet were cased in tiny slippers of soft Moroccan leather; her limbs, rounded and supple and smooth as ivory, were outlined beneath wide flowing trousers which were gathered at the ankles. A tunic of finest fabric was flung back, displaying a figure of delicate proportions, half recumbent now upon the sward. The loveliness of Moorish women has been heralded to the world; it is not strange that this maid, renowned even among her own people, should have struck the rustic priest to dumbness. He stood transfixed; and yet he wondered not, for it was seemly that such heavenly music should have sprung from the rarest of mortals. He saw that her hair, blacker than the night, rippled in a glorious cascade below her waist, and that her teeth embellished with the whiteness of alabaster the vermilion lips which smiled at him. That same intoxicating scent, sweeter than the musk of Hadramaut, enveloped her; her fingers were jeweled with nails which flashed in rivalry with their burden of precious stones as she toyed with the whispering strings. For a time she regarded the monk silently. "I am Zahra," she said at length, and Joseph thrilled at the tones of her voice. "To me, all things are music." "Zahra! 'Flower of the World,'" he repeated, wonderingly. After an instant he continued, harshly, "Then you are the daughter of the Moor?" "Yes. Abul Malek. You have heard of me?" "Who has not? Aye, you were rightly called 'Flower of the World.' But--this music! It brought me here against my will; it pulls at me like straining horses. Why is that? What wizardry do you possess? What strange chemistry?" She laughed lightly. "I possess no magic art. We are akin, you and I. That is all. You, of all men, are attuned to me."