“Hush, O my father! Ask only. Make petition. Is not His mercy boundless? Oh, how I have longed to know that place, the talking fruit, the tree, the wondrous birds, and the voice melodious, and the joy in God’s presence. Promise to ask for me, and my fear will be much less.” “If Allah will, if at the last day I be judged fit for salvation, then be sure I will fulfill thy petition, O light of my eyes!” With a sigh of relief, she loosed hold of him and sank back upon the pillows, closing her eyes. It was some time ere she again opened them. Then, meeting her father’s troubled gaze, she smiled languidly, almost voluptuously. “Be not too sorrowful, O my dear! May Allah reward that kind thought of thine which brought me hither. Here is like paradise. It is part of my fear to die that I must leave this pleasant room—of a light subdued, yet how cheerful!—and the pure sweet odors, and the loving tendance. But what matter! All is allotted.” She paused before adding in a more detached strain, as though trying to view herself through strange eyes: “Knowest thou, O my father, that, did it please Allah to preserve me in life, I think I should pray thee to give me to this good hakìm and not to Shibli. When I suffer pain, the hakìm needs but to look on me and it is gone. His touch is gentle, and his eyes are not as the eyes of Shibli, but rather resemble thine, O my father——” She broke off suddenly, for just then the door of the room opened and the hakìm himself entered, followed by Fatmeh and an unveiled woman who also waited upon Alia. Shems-ud-dìn withdrew. He knew now that the hakìm had told truth when he said that the end was very near. He saw his late torpor of enjoyment, and the still evident delight of Fatmeh, in their true colors, the colors of the sunset hour, the fairest of the day, the gate of night. The sun of a blinding love drew near his setting. Going down into the court, he spoke with Zeyd and the two old negroes till the hakìm came forth from Alia, when he ran and clutched his raiment. “Let me talk with thee, O lord of bounty!” “Willingly. We will go to the housetop; it is pleasant at this hour.” On the housetop, moving in the blaze of the sinking sun, the Frank explained to Shems-ud-dìn, as well as his knowledge of the Arabic would permit, the nature and peculiar symptoms of Alia’s malady. It was incurable, he had said so from the first. He had done what man could to relieve the pain of it, and increase by a little the number of her days. There was nothing more on earth that he could do. Even supposing she might live, which was impossible, the mere life deprived of certain organs would be ghastly torture, no blessing, but a very curse. Shems-ud-dìn, hearing him theorize thus, and mistaking the tenor of his jumbled words, on a sudden wave of longing forgot even Allah Most High. From his sinful heart he cried: “Save but the life of her, the life alone! She dead, what have I left on earth to care for?”