That was all Carl could see and he studied the scene for a while as he would have meditated on a work of art. Surely the gods had given her beauty.
Putting his glasses aside, he fell into a reverie. Full well did he realize that Sana was a woman of exceptional beauty and passion, whose enchantments could enslave and humiliate the proudest and crush the mightiest. Was she aware of it? He did not know. But if she was, why did she bury herself here in the burning sands? She had a knowledge of love and life, and Carl was certain she was anything but lukewarm.
He gave her the benefit of the doubt, making up his mind at the same time that he would do his best to induce her to marry him and go to New York with him.
How his friends would envy him, especially after he had remained a bachelor for so long a time. During the long years many a woman had tried to weave about him the net of love. There had been a time when he was legitimate prey to all kinds of cheats and vamps, but his experiences with them had taught him the cold calculating ways of the “gold digger” and he had resolved never again to play “Santa Claus.”
Carl, while having enjoyed life, became a man of reserve and had never been anxious to be led to the slaughter at the altar of matrimony. He did not want to be a husband on paper only. He also knew that man might come too late, but woman never. But he was not a foolish boy who wrote letters to a smart girl, who saved them with a definite object in view. He knew, too, that passionate love is the source of little pleasure and of much suffering.
Would Sana leave the desert soil of her birth for his sake?
Passion he once called evil, but now planted in his heart it became virtue and joy. He and she would be well matched. Carl had found his ideal.
Observations covering many years had taught him that most men are fools so far as women are concerned and that women are the most dangerous playthings God ever devised. But, he reasoned, this was generally caused by man’s own faults.
The favor Sana would win, as his wife, among his friends he pictured in the brightest colors.
It did occur to him that Sana, with feminine instinct, and so bewitching and beautiful a siren, could easily turn his vision of paradise into real hell, after she had brought him through a maelstrom of mad passion, which she would unquestionably arouse after having realized her full powers. “For woman, nothing is impossible” used to be a saying of his. But now, no such thoughts entered his head. He was too much in love!