any number of parents, her own two and twice
as many uncles and aunts, might get together and
give, not only their blessing, but lands and palaces--
two on the Bosphorus, one in Bagdad and another at
Smyrna, and nothing would avail unless his Imperial
Highness the Sultan gave his consent. Futhermore,
again, should it come to the ears of his August Presence
that any such scandalous alliance was in contemplation,
several yards of additional bow-strings
would be purchased and the whole coterie experience
a choking sensation which would last them the balance
of their lives.

Thus it was that, after that most blissful night
in the arbor--their last--in which she had clung to
him as if knowing he was about to slip forever from
her arms, both caiques were laid up for the season;
the first tight locked and guarded in the palace of
the young man's father, five miles along the blue
Bosphorus as the bird flies, and the second in the
little boat-house in the small indent of a cove under
the garden holding the beloved arbor, the little white
house, and My Lady of the diaphanous veil and the
all-absorbing eyes.

With the lifting of the curtain on the third act,
the scene shifts. No more Sweet Waters, no more
caiques nor stolen interviews, the music of hot kisses
drowned in the splash of the listening fountain. Instead,
there is seen a sumptuously furnished interior