Khaled, A Tale of Arabia. F. Marion Crawford

'which are as the stars Sirius and Aldebaran, when they are over the desert in the nights of winter. What jewels can you show me like these?'

      Then Zehowah laughed softly and sat down beside her husband on the edge of the couch.

      'Nevertheless,' she said, 'the dresses are very rich. You might admire them also.'

      'I will look at them when you are not near me, for then my sight will be restored for other things.'

      Khaled took her hand in his and held it.

      'Tell me, Zehowah, will you love me?' he asked in a soft voice.

      'You are my lord and my master,' she answered, looking modestly downward, and her hand lay quite still.

      She was so very beautiful that as Khaled sat beside her and looked at her downcast face, and knew that she was his, he could not easily believe that she was cold and indifferent to him.

      'By Allah!' he thought, 'can it be so hard to get a woman's love? Truly, I think she begins to love me already.'

      Zehowah looked up and smiled carelessly as though answering his question, but Khaled was obliged to admit in his heart that the answer lacked clearness, for he found it no easier to interpret a woman's smile than men had found it before him, and have found it since, even to this day.

      'You have had many suitors,' he said at last, 'and it is said that your father has given you your own free choice, allowing you to see them and hear them speak while he was receiving them. Tell me why you have chosen me rather than the rest, unless it is because you love me? For I came with empty hands, and without servants or slaves, or retinue of any kind, riding alone out of the Red Desert. It was therefore for myself that you took me.'

      'You are right. It was for yourself that I took you.'

      'Then it was for love of me, was it not?'

      'There were and still are many and good reasons,' answered Zehowah calmly, and at the same time withdrawing her hand from his and smoothing back the black hair from her forehead. 'I told them all to my father, and he was convinced.'

      'Tell them to me also,' said Khaled.

      So she explained all to him in detail, making him see everything as she saw it herself. And the explanation was so very clear, that Khaled felt a cold chill in his heart as he understood that she had chosen him rather for politic reasons, than because she wished him for her husband.

      'And yet,' she added at the end, 'it was the will of Allah, for otherwise I would not have chosen you.'

      'But surely,' he said, somewhat encouraged by these last words, 'there was some love in the choice, too.'

      'How can I tell!' she exclaimed, with a little laugh. 'What is love?'

      Finding himself confronted by such an amazing question, Khaled was silent, and took her hand again. For though many have asked what love is, no one has ever been able to find an answer in words to satisfy the questioner, seeing that the answer can have no more to do with words than love itself, a matter sufficiently explained by a certain wise man, who understood the heart of man. If, said he, a man who loves a woman, or a woman who loves a man could give in words the precise reason why he or she loves, then love itself could be defined in language; but as no man or woman has ever succeeded in doing this, I infer that they who love best do not themselves know in what love consists—still less therefore can any one else know, wherefore the definition is impossible, and no one need waste time in trying to find it.

      A certain wit has also said that although it be impossible for any man to explain the nature of love to many persons at the same time, he generally finds it easy to make his explanations to one person only. But this is a mere quibbling jest and not deserving of any attention.

      Zehowah expected an answer to her question, and Khaled was silent, not because he was as yet too little acquainted with the feelings of a man to give them expression, but because he already felt so much that it was hard for him to speak at all.