"Phyllis, I am not worthy of thy love.
I pray thee let no kindly word be said
Of me at all, for in the train thereof,
Whenas yet-parted lips, sigh-visited,
End speech and wait, mine when I will to move,
Such joy awakens that I grow afraid."
THOMAS ROWLAND. _Triumphs of Phyllis_.




I


They passed with incredible celerity, those next ten days--those
strange, delicious, topsy-turvy days. To Rudolph Musgrave it seemed
afterward that he had dreamed them away in some vague Lotus Land--in a
delectable country where, he remembered, there were always purple eyes
that mocked you, and red lips that coaxed you now, and now cast gibes at
you.

You felt, for the most part of your stay in this country, flushed and
hot and uncomfortable and unbelievably awkward, and you were mercilessly
bedeviled there; but not for all the accumulated wealth of Samarkand and
Ind and Ophir would you have had it otherwise. Ah, no, not otherwise in
the least trifle. For now uplifted to a rosy zone of acquiescence, you
partook incuriously at table of nectar and ambrosia, and noted abroad,
without any surprise, that you trod upon a more verdant grass than
usual, and that someone had polished up the sun a bit; and, in fine, you