Then he told her of his palace in detail—of the fronts, no two of them alike—the pillars, those of red granite, those of porphyry, and the others of marble—windows which could not be glutted with light—arches such as the Western Kaliphs transplanted from Damascus and Bagdad, in form first seen in a print of the hoof of Borak. Then he described the interior, courts, halls; passages, fountains: and when he had thus set the structure before her, he said, softly smoothing her hair:
"There now—you have it all—and verily, as Hiram, King of Tyre, helped Solomon in his building, he shall help me also."
"How can he help you?" she asked, shaking her finger at him. "He has been dead this thousand years, and more."
"Yes, dear, to everybody but me," he answered, lightly, and asked in turn: "How do you like the palace?"
"It will be wonderful!"
"I have named it. Would you like to hear the name?"
"It is something pretty, I know."
"The Palace of Lael."
Her cry of delighted surprise, given with clasped hands and wide-open eyes, would have been tenfold payment were he putting her in possession of the finished house.
The sensation over, he told her of his design for a galley.