This sort of banter lasted so long that poor Mary's cheeks burned with mixed vanity and mortification, and she made an excuse to leave us.
"And what does our Lieutenant advise monsieur to do?" asked the Général,—"to settle here, or to follow his escadron to the Desert?" Whereupon the poor Lieutenant colored, and said nothing.
What an experience it was, that Christmas-day in the Desert! The noonday sun seemed to dissolve in the warm atmosphere, and, instead of a single orb shining overhead, large and golden, we had melted suns innumerable about us, and almost lost the sense of corporeity in their charmed medium.
When the short bright day waned, and the large stars were coming out one by one, we found ourselves near home; and when the heavens had turned to bluish-black, and the stars to splendid silvery moons, we passed under the gate of Teschoun, and saw our shadows, darker and deeper than real things, fall across the white walls of mosque and fortress. For shadow and substance lost their identity in the Desert and one is always on the point of mistaking the one for the other: if anything, shadow is the more real of the two.
So absorbed was I in the suggestions of this mysterious beauty, that I had forgotten all about my sister's lovers till we were fairly in our little sitting-room. Then Mary began to sigh and blush, and to hint that she thought we had better leave Teschoun very soon.
"You see, Tom, dear," she said, with tears in her eyes, "the Général says he adores me, and the Commandant says he never loved any one in the world until he saw me, and the Capitaine says that if I go away he will blow his brains out, and what am I to do?"
"And the Lieutenant,—what did he say?"
"He says nothing," said Mary, looking down; "and,"—here came a sob,—"and I like him best of all!"
"But, if he does not declare the same liking for you, we must leave him out of the question, and choose between the other three, I suppose."
"He does not speak because he is too modest: I'm sure he likes me," Mary added, still ready to cry.