messages they exchange! Such evaporations of the insipidities of free love! Khalid again takes up with Shakib, from whom he does not conceal anything. The epistles are read by both, and sometimes replied to by both! And she, in an effort to seem Oriental, calls the Dervish, “My Syrian Rose,” “My Desert Flower,” “My Bedouin Boy,” et cetera, always closing her message with either a strip of Syrian sky or a camel load of the narcissus.
Ah, but not thus will the play close. True, Khalid alone adorns her studio for a time, or rather adores in it; he alone accompanies her to Bohemia. But the Dervish, who was always going wrong in Bohemia—always at the door of the Devil—ventures one night to escort another woman to her studio. Ah, those studios! The Enchantress on hearing of the crime lights the fire under her cauldron. “Double, double, toil and trouble!” She then goes to the telephone—g‑r‑r‑r‑r you swine—you Phoenician murex—she hangs up the receiver, and stirs the cauldron. “Double, double, toil and trouble!”
But the Dervish writes her an extraordinary letter, in which we suspect the pen of our Scribe, and from which we can but transcribe the following:
“You found in me a vacant heart,” he pleads, “and you occupied it. The divan therein is yours, yours alone. Nor shall I ever permit a chance caller, an intruder, to exasperate you. … My breast is a stronghold in which you are well fortified. How then can anyone disturb you? … How can I turn from myself against myself? Somewhat of you, the best of you, circulates with my blood; you are my breath of life. How can I then overcome you? How can I turn to another for the sustenance which you alone can give? … If I be thirst personified, you are the living, flowing brook, the everlasting fountain. O for a drink—”