He received me morosely, and after smoking a pipe and drinking with him a cup of coffee, which we received from the white, gentle hands of Basilia, who was enveloped as before in her veil of lace, I departed, happy that I had seen but the tips of her dear fingers once again; happy that I had been under the roof of her father, and happy that for one brief hour I had shared a corner of his carpet, and breathed the same atmosphere with one so beautiful and so well-beloved as she. Again and again I came to visit Abdallah; for alas! I no longer sighed for the unfurling of our green standard against the Russ; I only counted the days and hours till again I should visit the house of the merchant at Soudjack. Secluded as the old man kept Basilia--for he deemed her his last and most valuable estate--a piece of property on which he could at any time realise a thousand piastres in the Stamboul market--we had nightly interviews; for what are the difficulties that love cannot surmount? I had discovered that her chamber window opened into old Abdallah's garden; its wall was easily crossed, and then three notes on my lute were the signal which brought Basilia to me; but she was beyond arm's length, and I never dared to climb, though, had the wealth of Ormuz been mine, I had given it all to have kissed but once her hand. Yet, until she was bestowed upon me by her father, what hope had I of ever doing so? In the wild and half-civilised countries of the East, a lover invests his mistress with a thousand imaginary attributes, such as a lover of Europe or the West can never do. The seclusion in which we keep our women, the danger and risk of approaching or even speaking of them to their nearest relations, all enhance the charm, the secresy, and the romance of an Oriental love; and thus, with such a heart as mine, it became an all-absorbing and engrossing passion, in which to be without hope was to be without life. Hourly I exclaimed to myself,-- "Bismillah! oh, Osman, happy thou to win a heart like hers!" for Basilia responded as warmly as she dared, or as I could have desired.