"The sun has risen, Masa," cried Mohammed--"the night is past. As often as I have wandered among these rocks, never before has morning seemed so fair--never before have the sun's rays so filled my heart with warmth. Heretofore, the sunrise was but the signal for me to go in pursuit of game, or to prepare to cross over to Imbro, to look after the fishermen's nets, set out the day before. But to-day Allah proclaims to me why it is that the sunlight is so glorious, that the eagle soars so proudly aloft, that the waves surge so grandly. O Masa, I will tell you why it is thus: it is because they are all imbued with the spirit of creation, and this spirit is love-- eternal, illimitable love." "Speak not thus," said the maiden, tremblingly. "Speak not thus to me. It does not beseem a maiden to listen to a man's words of love without the approval of her father." "But will you not accord me this privilege, Masa?" asked he, gently. "May I not go to your father and entreat him to give me the pure maiden, that she may accompany me through day and night?" "No, do not speak thus," she repeated, tremblingly. "You told me you would speak of my father--speak of him, Mohammed Ali." "Yes; of your father," murmured he. "I had so much, so very much to say to you, and now it seems to me that all is already said. What remains is as nothing, and is forgotten." "You are mocking me," said she, gently. "You only wished to see if my father's daughter would be foolish enough to follow you where she should never go except at her father's side, or accompanied by women. You have punished me, Mohammed, for my folly and boldness in following you and confiding in you. If you have nothing to say to me, then let me quickly go and return to my father's house." "No, Masa, do not go. I did not intend to mock you; I really had so much to say to you! Yet I know not how it is with me; it seems to me that if I have been transformed, created anew; that yesterday and its events are forgotten. I am as a new, a different being." He could not hear the voice that whispered in her heart also, that the dawn of a new day had cast its spell over them both. "Oh, speak to me of my father," she cried, in anxious tones. "Yes, I will; I will call reason to my aid. Your father is my prisoner, and I have sworn that I would bring the rebels back to submission, and honor requires that I should finish what I have undertaken. I now deplore it in my inmost soul, now that the magic of your eyes has transformed me, and made of the fierce combatant a man who longs to fall at your feet, and pour out his heart's agony and bliss. And yet I cannot undo what I have begun. I registered an oath in the presence of the men of Praousta, and told them: --If you do not on the morrow comply with what I have commanded, in the name of the tschorbadji, I shall behead the prisoners that Allah has delivered into my hands!'" "O my father!" cried Masa, loudly, in tones of anguish.