almost child-like was his confidence in himself and his own
ability to engender joy! All at once the young girl Zoralin
spoke,--her accents were low and timorous:

"May it please my lord Sah-luma to hear me..." she said and
paused.

"Thy lord Sah-luma hears thee with pleasure, Zoralin," replied the
Laureate gently. "Thou dost speak more sweetly than many a bird
doth sing!"

A rich, warm blush crimsoned the maiden's cheeks at these dulcet
words,--she drew a quick, uneasy breath, and then went on,--

"I love Niphrata!" she murmured in a soft tone of touching
tenderness, . . "And I have watched her often when she deemed
herself unseen, . . she has, methinks, shed many tears for sake of
some deep, heart-buried sorrow! We have lived as sisters, sharing
the same room, and the same couch of sleep, but alas! in spite of
all my lord's most constant kindly favor, Niphrata is not happy,
..and.. and I have sometimes thought--" here her mellow voice sank
into a nervous indistinctness--"that it may be because she loves
my lord Sah-luma far too well!"

And as she said this she looked up with a sudden affright in her
dark, lovely eyes, as though she were alarmed at her own
presumption. Sah-luma met her troubled gaze calmly and with a
bright smile of complacent vanity.

"And dost thou plead for thine absent friend, Zoralin?" ... he