long before, but his daughter and her women received him with waving
veils and loud lamentations; for the astrologer, his brother-in-law, had
lost both his first-born son and his grandson, and the plague had
snatched its victims from the homes of many a friend.

But the senseless youth soon demanded all the care the women could
bestow, and after bathing him and binding a healing ointment on the
dangerous wound in his head, strong wine and food were placed before him,
after which, refreshed and strengthened, he obeyed the summons of the
daughter of his host.

The dust-covered, worn-out fellow was transformed into a handsome youth.
His perfumed hair fell in long curling locks from beneath the fresh white
bandage, and gold-bordered Egyptian robes from the wardrobe of Kasana's
dead husband covered his pliant bronzed limbs. He seemed pleased with
the finery of his garments, which exhaled a subtle odor of spikenard new
to his senses; for the eyes in his handsome face sparkled brilliantly.

It was many a day since the captain's daughter, herself a woman of
unusual beauty and charm, had seen a handsomer youth. Within the year
she had married a man she did not love Kasana had returned a widow to her
father's house, which lacked a mistress, and the great wealth bequeathed
to her, at her husband's death, made it possible for her to bring into
the soldier's unpretending home the luxury and ease which to her had now
become a second nature.

Her father, a stern man prone to sudden fits of passion, now yielded
absolutely to her will. Formerly he had pitilessly enforced his own,
compelling the girl of fifteen to wed a man many years her senior. This
had been done because he perceived that Kasana had given her young heart