Then he searched his bedroom, and, of course, discovered nobody hiding. But chills crawled on his spine while he was about it, and he shivered still as he stood in the centre of the room examining the knife and testing edge and point. Then, close to his ear, a low voice whispered: “Be careful, my lord; the Yezidee knife is poisoned. But it is written that a poisoned heart is more dangerous still.” He had turned like a flash; and he saw, between him and the sitting-room door, a very young girl with slightly slanting eyes, and rose and ivory features as perfect as though moulded out of tinted bisque. She wore a loose blue linen robe, belted in, short at the elbows and skirt, showing two creamy-skinned arms and two bare feet in straw sandals. In one hand she had a spray of purple mulberries, and she looked coolly at Cleves and ate a berry or two. “Give me the knife,” she said calmly. He handed it to her; she wiped it with a mulberry leaf and slipped it through her girdle. “I am Sansa,” she said with a friendly glance at him, busy with her fruit. Cleves strove to speak naturally, but his voice trembled. “Is it you—I mean your real self—your own body?” “It’s my real self. Yes. But my body is asleep in my mulberry grove.” “In—in China?” “Yes,” she said calmly, detaching another mulberry and eating it. A few fresh leaves fell on the centre table. Sansa chose another berry. “You know,” she said, “that I came to Tressa this morning,—to my little Heart of Fire I came when she called me. And I was quite sleepy, too. But I heard her, though there was a night wind in the mulberry trees, and the river made a silvery roaring noise in the dark.... And now I must go. But I shall come again very soon.” She smiled shyly and held out her lovely little hand, “—As Tressa tells me is your custom in America,” she said, “I offer you a good-bye.” He took her hand and found it a warm, smooth thing of life and pulse. “Why,” he stammered in his astonishment, “you _are_ real! You are not a ghost!” “Yes, I am real,” she answered, surprised, “but I’m not in my body,—if you mean that.” Then she laughed and withdrew her hand, and, going, made him a friendly gesture. “Cherish, my lord, my darling Heart of Fire. Serpents twist and twine. So do rose vines. May their petals make your path of velvet and sweet scented. May everything that is round be a pomegranate for you two to share; may everything that sways be lilies bordering a path wide enough for two. In the name of the Most Merciful God, may the only cry you hear be the first sweet wail of your first-born. And when the tenth shall be born, may you and Heart of Fire bewail your fate because both of you desire more children!” She was laughing when she disappeared. Cleves thought she was still there, so radiant the sunshine, so sweet the scent in the room.