The palm-wine and the dates of the Arab will suffice for me for many a day to come." "You would do better to come with me," said Zelinda, shaking her head with somewhat of a scornful smile.

"You were certainly neither born nor brought up to be a hermit, and there is nothing on my oasis so destructive as you imagine.

What is there more than shrubs and flowers and beasts gathered together from different quarters of the world, perhaps a little strangely interwoven; each, that is to say, partaking of the nature of the other, in a similar manner to that which you must have seen in our Arabian carving! A moving flower, a bird growing on a branch, a fountain gleaming with fiery sparks, a singing twig--these are truly no hateful things!" "He must avoid temptation who does not wish to be overcome by it," said Heimbert very gravely; "I am for the desert.
Will it please you to come out to visit me again ?" Zelinda looked down somewhat displeased.

Then suddenly bending her head still lower she replied, "Yes; toward evening I shall be here again." And, turning away, she at once disappeared in the rising whirlwind of the desert..