“By Allah, wild beasts! Human beings are more sensitive. How can they love Nature who approve her in most horrid mood? It is evident that God Most High designed such scenes for a warning and a menace, to be shunned. Yet these applaud. They are utterly devoid of feeling. May Our Lord destroy them!”

A prey to panic, he no longer heard her arguments. His one desire was to rejoin his friends as soon as might be, to see once more the visage of a true believer; and two days later they were back in Paris.

Barakah’s return was hailed with rapture by the hapless girls, who had not ventured out of doors during her absence. Things, they declared, were even worse than ere she left, their men more shameless. Yûsuf had sworn beforehand to discountenance nocturnal outings, and for the first two days he kept his word; though Hâfiz and the others begged her to release him from it, protesting that their occupations were most innocent. Indeed, their childlike zest in evildoing so resembled innocence that she felt cruel when refusing, as if denying babies some small pleasure. But on the third day Yûsuf came to her, with worried frown, and said: