But this was between themselves; this could hurt no one. By and by, of course, he would insist on a commonplace engagement, and a wedding. Yes! a commonplace wedding. He had, despite his vague repugnance to her origin, made up his mind to that. No one but an utter cad could take what he was taking, and then shake his bridle rein and ride away. But for the present, it was the most absolutely perfect bit of romance in his whole life. He could not, would not give it up. Laila was right! This was the essence. As a rule, people mixed love, diluted it, were vaguely ashamed of its absorbing influence. But when you came to analyze even the diluted feeling, its virtue lay in this irrational content, this desire for nothing better than this best of pleasures--this paradise of a woman's or a man's love. He laughed, suddenly, at the memory of Laila's quick grasp of his meaning when Muriel had overheard his remark about the time. Such quickness, in the latter, would have made him revolt from it; but with Laila it was different. A passionate gratitude to the girl to whom fear, remorse, the very possibility of change seemed unknown, rose up and claimed him. Dear little girl! She was so absolutely single-minded in her love for him. How could anyone expect him to forego the luxury of such love yet awhile? In thinking Laila single-minded, Vincent thought the truth, so far as he was concerned. If love, passionate as Juliet's, and far more innocent in one way, far more _rusé_ in another, ever existed, hers was that love. Nevertheless, its very integrity made her curiously cunning in regard to anything which threatened to disturb that idyll in the garden. So, at that very moment, when Vincent looked up at her windows asserting her absolute lack of pretence and single-mindedness, she was pitting her wits against old Akbar Khân in a manner worthy of her grandmother, Anâri Begum; since Akbar, far more than her guardian, was to be feared. The latter, honest man, went to his bed, beyond the chapel, at ten of the clock precisely; but Akbar, who from ancient habit was given to prowling about at night, and napping in odd corners, had many chances of discovery. During the last few days, however, when she, for her own purposes, had let him talk, he had become so garrulous regarding his past that she had recognized in him an unscrupulous confidant, with whom, in face of the possibility of requiring one, it was wise to remain on terms. So, as she lounged on the sofa, she listened to his endless talk with tolerance. "Nay!" she interrupted at last. "If, as thou sayest she will, she brings me more dresses and jewels, she may call me Begum, and hint at my being one, really, a thousand times over! Why not? Begum and Princess are the same, and my great-grandmother in Italy was that. Pidar Narâyan told me so to-day."