"Because I thought ill of you, Masa; because, while I lay in anguish up yonder on the rock the other day, I accused you in my senseless anger, and cursed my love for you. I thought you were a woman like all other women, and yet you are beautiful and fair and pure, like a houri of paradise. I wished to tear you from my heart as we tear weeds from a flower-garden, and my heart was to be henceforth accessible only to ambition and glory; and now I know that all this is vain and empty. Mohammed no longer has aspirations after glory and renown; Mohammed no longer knows that wreaths of fame are twined and that laurels bloom without in the world; Mohammed only knows that this is paradise, and that heaven's fairest flower blooms here at his side. I feel your breath, my flower, I inhale fragrance from your lips, and see the starlight in your eyes, though none shines in upon us from the dark world without. I am with you, and you with me. Oh, let me rest at your side, and forget the world, and may it forget us too!" "I do not understand your words," murmured she. "You are wise and learned, and I am only a poor girl, who has no words to express her thoughts, and hardly thoughts for that which she feels. I do know, however, that I am in paradise, and Allah forbid that my feet should bear me out into the world again! Oh, I never wish to see it again, Mohammed. And beautiful it would be, it seems to me, to slumber here in sweet tranquillity, never to awake again." "Oh, it were heavenly, my sweet dove," murmured he, pressing her to his heart, "to fall into a sweet slumber here, and to journey hence, heavenward, to awaken in paradise. I would we had nothing more to do with the world; yet, swear to me, Masa, that when the world holds us in its embrace again, you will love me eternally--say eternally!" "What does eternally mean?" asked she, softly. "I do not know what eternally means. All life is a single day. At sunrise this morning I felt that I loved you, and now do you suppose that Masa is so forgetful a child that she cannot preserve what she feels in her heart for a single day until the sun sets in the evening?"