A pale, blue-eyed flower was she, looking as if she had grown up beneath the light of the moon instead of the light of the sun; her shape, her figure, was so delicate that it reminded one of those sylphs of the fairy world that fly without wings. Her voice was sweeter, more tender, than the voices of the other damsels; and, wiser than they, she could speak so that you felt rather than heard what she said. Ali loved to toy with her light hair, unwind the long folds of her tresses, cover his face with their silken richness, and fancy he was reposing in the shades of paradise. And the child loved the man. Ali was a handsome old fellow. His beard was as glossy and as purely white as the wing of a swan; the roses of his cheeks had not yet faded; when he smiled he was no longer a tiger, but revealed a row of teeth even handsomer than her own. And, in addition to that, he was valiant--a hero. Even in old men love is no mere impotent desire when accompanied with all the vigorous passion of youth. And Eminah knew not that there were such beings as youths in the world. Excepting her father and her husband, she had never seen a man, and therefore fancied that other men also had just such white beards and silvery eyelashes as they. Brought up from the days of her childhood in the midst of a harem, among women and eunuchs, she had not the remotest idea of the romantic visions which the hearts of love-sick girls are wont to form from the contemplation of their ideals; to her her husband was the most perfect man for whom a woman's heart had ever beaten, and she clung to him as if he had been a supernatural being.