These duties done, I gave myself up to enjoyment.

Zara and I became inseparables; we worked together, read together, and together every morning gave those finishing-touches to the ordering and arrangement of the household which are essentially feminine, and which not the wisest philosopher in all the world has been, or ever will be, able to accomplish successfully.

We grew to love each other dearly, with that ungrudging, sympathizing, confiding friendship that is very rarely found between two women.

In the meantime my cure went on rapidly.

Every night on retiring to rest Heliobas prepared a medicinal dose for me, of the qualities of which I was absolutely ignorant, but which I took trustingly from his hand.