“On that week, each three months, we were free.... If a young man should please us....” “Free?” he repeated. “To love,” she explained coolly. “Oh.” He nodded, but his face became rather grim. “There came to me at the yaïlak,” she went on carelessly, “one Khassar Noïane—Noïane means Prince—all in a surcoat of gold tissue with green vines embroidered, and wearing a green cap trimmed with dormouse, and green boots inlaid with stiff gold.... “He was so young ... a boy. I laughed. I said: ‘Is this a Yaçaoul? An Urdu-envoy of Prince Erlik?’—mocking him as young and thoughtless girls mock—not in unfriendly manner—though I would not endure the touch of any man at all. “And when I laughed at him, this Eighur boy flew into such a rage! Kai! I was amazed. “‘Sou-sou! Squirrel!’ he cried angrily at me. ‘Learn the Yacaz, little chatterer! Little mocker of men, it is ten blows with a stick you require, not kisses!’ “At that I whistled my two dogs, Bars and Alaga, for I did not think what he said was funny. “I said to him: ‘You had better go home, Khassar Noïane, for if no man has ever pleased me where I am at liberty to please myself, here on the Lake of the Ghost, then be very certain that no boy can please Keuke-Mongol here or anywhere!’ “And at that—kai! What did he say—that monkey?” She looked at her husband, her splendid eyes ablaze with wrathful laughter, and made a gesture full of angry grace: “‘Squirrel!’ he cries—‘little malignant sorceress of Yian! May everything high about you become a sandstorm, and everything long a serpent, and everything broad a toad, and everything——’ “But I had had enough, Victor,” she added excitedly, “and I made a wild bee bite him on the lip! What do you think of such a courtship?” she cried, laughing. But Cleves’s face was a study in emotions. And then, suddenly, the laughing mask seemed to slip from the bewitching features of Keuke Mongol; and there was Tressa Norne—Tressa Cleves—disconcerted, paling a little as the memory of her impulsive confidence in this man beside her began to dawn on her more clearly. “I—I’m sorry——” she faltered.... “You’ll think me silly—think evil of me, perhaps——” She looked into his troubled eyes, then suddenly she took her face into both hands and covered it, sitting very still. “We’ll go South together,” he said in an uncertain voice.... “I hope you will try to think of me as a friend.... I’m just troubled because I am so anxious to understand you. That is all.... I’m—I’m troubled, too, because I am anxious that you should think well of me. Will you try, always?” She nodded. “I want to be your friend, always,” he said. “Thank you, Mr. Cleves.” It was a strange spot he chose for Tressa—strange but lovely in its own unreal and rather spectral fashion—where a pearl-tinted mist veiled the St. Johns, and made exquisite ghosts of the palmettos, and softened the sun to a silver-gilt wafer pasted on a nacre sky.