intrusion.

I saw nobody, but felt as if some one was gently pushing me. As I awoke
she said not a word, but beckoned me with her five fingers bedecked with
rings to follow her cautiously. I got up noiselessly, and, though not a
soul save myself was there in the countless apartments of that deserted
palace with its slumbering sounds and waiting echoes, I feared at every
step lest any one should wake up. Most of the rooms of the palace were
always kept closed, and I had never entered them.

I followed breathless and with silent steps my invisible guide--I cannot
now say where. What endless dark and narrow passages, what long
corridors, what silent and solemn audience-chambers and close secret
cells I crossed!

Though I could not see my fair guide, her form was not invisible to my
mind's eye, --an Arab girl, her arms, hard and smooth as marble, visible
through her loose sleeves, a thin veil falling on her face from the
fringe of her cap, and a curved dagger at her waist! Methought that one
of the thousand and one Arabian Nights had been wafted to me from the
world of romance, and that at the dead of night I was wending my way
through the dark narrow alleys of slumbering Bagdad to a trysting-place
fraught with peril.

At last my fair guide stopped abruptly before a deep blue screen, and
seemed to point to something below. There was nothing there, but a
sudden dread froze the blood in my heart-methought I saw there on the
floor at the foot of the screen a terrible negro eunuch dressed in rich
brocade, sitting and dozing with outstretched legs, with a naked sword
on his lap. My fair guide lightly tripped over his legs and held up a