thine husband!” cried Abu’s wife, but Ayesha contented herself with the ejaculation, “Praise be to the Lord”--in Whom she apparently recognized a capacity for chivalry that was foreign to her husband. And one night not long afterward, hoping perhaps to turn the tables on him, she secretly followed him when he slipped quietly out of the house on what seemed to be an amorous expedition; but she was grievously disappointed upon discovering that he was bent upon no more exciting errand than going to a graveyard to offer up prayers for the dead. Thus the affair ended. Mohammed, however, immediately improvised a law that imposed a severe scourging upon scandal-mongers who failed to produce four witnesses to substantiate any charge of whoredom--a penalty that was at once inflicted upon Hassan, another man named Mistah, and even one of the Prophet’s sisters-in-law; but he dared not treat Abdallah ibn Obei thus. Hassan, moreover, had already been badly wounded by the indignant Safwan; and so Mohammed, who really loved the incorrigibly mischievous versifier, salved his double hurts by presenting him a costly piece of property and a concubine. The grateful fellow immediately manufactured new stanzas in praise of Ayesha’s purity, her pert humor, and her supple figure--a series of compliments to which she had the bad grace to retort that the poet himself was disgustingly fat. Nor did Mohammed stop here; he quickly proceeded to bring about other equally desirable reforms. The institution of the Veil for women--a custom, already not unknown, whose origin was probably due to the common superstitious fear of the horrific “evil eye”--was now imposed upon his harem; and the Koran also made it clear that the day of Moslem peeping Toms was over. “O ye believers! Enter not the apartments of the Prophet, except ye be called to sup with him, without waiting his convenient time.... And stay not for familiar converse; for verily that giveth uneasiness to the Prophet. It shameth him to say this unto you; but verily God is not ashamed of the Truth. And when ye ask anything of the Prophet’s wives, ask it of them from behind a curtain; this will be more pure for your hearts and for their hearts. It is not fitting that ye should give uneasiness to the Apostle of God, nor that ye should marry his Wives after him for ever. Verily that would be a grievous thing in the sight of God.... The Prophet is nearer unto the Believers than their own souls, and his Wives are their Mothers.” All Moslem women, furthermore, were commanded to veil themselves, at home or while walking abroad, from the prying eyes of everyone except a rich variety of relatives. “And say to the believing women that they cast down their looks and guard their private parts and display not their ornaments except what appears thereof, and let them wear their head-coverings over their bosoms, and not display their ornaments except to their husbands or their fathers, or the fathers