“It was always June in Yian,” she said under her breath.
She seemed to have fallen into a revery; he watched the sensitive face. Almost imperceptibly it changed; became altered, younger, strangely lovely.
Presently she looked up—and it seemed to him that it was not Tressa Norne at all he saw, but little Keuke—Heavenly Azure—of the Yezidee temple, as she dropped one slim knee over the other and crossed her hands above it.
“It was very beautiful in Yian,” she said, “—Yian of the thousand bridges and scented gardens so full of lilies. Even after they took me to the temple, and I thought the world was ending, God’s skies still remained soft overhead, and His weather fair and golden.... And when, in the month of the Snake, the Eight Sheiks-el-Djebel came to the temple to spread their shrouds on the rose-marble steps, then, after they had departed, chanting the Prayers for the Dead, each to his Tower of Silence, we temple girls were free for a week.... And once I went with Tchagane—a girl—and with Yulun—another girl—and we took our keutch, which is our luggage, and we went to the yaïlak, or summer pavilion on the Lake of the Ghost. Oh, wonderful,—a silvery world of pale-gilt suns and of moons so frail that the cloud-fleece at high-noon has more substance!”
Her voice died out; she sat gazing down at her spread fingers, on one of which gleamed her wedding-ring.
After a little, she went on dreamily:
“On that week, each three months, we were free.... If a young man should please us....”
“Free?” he repeated.
“To love,” she explained coolly.
“Oh.” He nodded, but his face became rather grim.