ERYON awoke with the issue of an interesting dream in doubt. Terah had admitted that she loved him; the Prince had seemed disposed to hear reason; but just then the purple-and-gold heraldic heron which formed the central device of his Highness's State banner detached from the surrounding embroidery, and flew viciously at Meryon's head. He heard Terah's voice raised in warning, and saw two black mountains at the verge of a desolate plain, sundered from each other by a rugged defile. The sun was setting behind the mountains—and he awoke.
He yawned and glanced at the long silver chain by which a lamp of pierced brass depended from the ceiling. A ray of sunlight from the east window rested on it, by which token he knew it was about nine o'clock.
The room in which he lay was beautiful, and, as the bedchamber of a modern young American, singular.
Lofty and of good size, it was rather narrow for its length. Polished marble of tender hues paved the floor, the central part of which was depressed several inches below the ends, and in a basin in this depression leaped and fell the slender jet of a fountain. A high dado glowed with Oriental tiles, coloured like fading sunsets, and the walls above were hung with tapestries, stained as with crushed roses and violets. Higher still was a wide border of dark-brown wood exquisitely carved, and above this the four windows, a foot high by four times that width. Silks of mellow tone draped the ceiling.
Along three sides of the south end of the chamber extended a broad divan, part of which served Meryon as a bed. Here and there about this dim, lovely room stood vases of wrought bronze and fine porcelain. Within reach of his arm was a triple gong on a carved wood stand, with a hammer hanging by a silken cord. Meryon struck thrice upon this graceful instrument, and three soft notes of an octave's interval tingled on the air. As they subsided the portière was pushed open, and a graceful figure entered bearing a tray with coffee, cakes, and cigarettes.
Had the figure been fully draped, you would have taken it for that of a girl, so refined and beautiful were the aquiline features and the shaggy cloud of soot-black, fine-spun hair which fell on the shoulders. But the supple body, naked from the waist up, was that of a boy of twelve or fourteen, tawny as fine bronze.
Girt around his loins was a skirt of dark blue gossamer stuff, with silver lines running through it and a silver fringe, and about his neck a double necklace of delicate silver links hung halfway down his breast. Black as night were the great eyes which met Meryon's blue ones, and radiant the smile of greeting which revealed his flashing teeth.
The ensuing dialogue, though carried on in an Oriental tongue, shall, for the sake of uniformity, be here given in the English equivalent.
"The top of the morning to you, Ebal, my beauty!" said the American. "You're a sight for sore eyes. Did anyone ever tell you that you look surprisingly like the divine Princess Terah—God bless her! Maybe only an artist who has painted your portrait as often as I have could see it in you in your present rig; but put on one of her dresses, and anyone would know it. The funny thing is that neither she nor you resemble the Prince. But Terah's mother, if she were askedhowever, there's no fathoming the mysteries of Oriental—diplomacy."
"Honoured Lord!" murmured the boy in a half-tone of half-frightened remonstrance, but smiling still. He knelt and placed the tray upon the divan beside his master. Then taking a cigarette from the enamelled box on the tray, he put it daintily between his lips and lit it at the silver spirit-lamp. Having inhaled a single whiff of fragrant smoke, he handed it to Meryon with a charming obeisance, and he accepted it with the complacency of one who knows his East and likes it.
"I don't know whether this is most like Aladdin's Palace or a glorified Turkish bath," said he to himself, and then to Ebal, "What news have you brought me, you rascal? What of the Rose who makes cabbages of all other roses—the Star that makes a brass kettle of the sun? Have you brought me nothing from her?"
Now, Ebal thought Meryon a wonderful and worshipful being, but, as a born Oriental, he was frightened by the audacity of his passion for the young Princess. From a fold of his girdle he took a small rosebud, such as grew on the gardens of Saadi or of Omar, and presented it to the other as if it were a fragile explosive.