The star. (Reynoldsville, Pa.) 1892-1946, 1906-07-25
BY WILLIAM S. BIRGE.
Adapted From the Portuguese.

~0 0E1 kzE1xE o GRzn1n21Doo~
sat down in the desert with Abb
derah, the Arab, and the Arab told
his tale. An Elusive mirage had
lured the twain, Abderah and myself,
into the very Valley of the Dry
Bones, an arid and sandy gorge south
of Arabia Deserta. Our throats were
dry as vellum with thirst, and Abb
derah's voice had husky rattle
1T is exactly year to-day" began
Adberah, the prince of his clan,
"since Zara, the Beautiful, gave up
the ghost, and at every anniversary
thereof, l must tell my story or die.
i could give no reason" he went on
huskily, mo reason, on the oath of
a Saracen, why l married the low
born Zara of the desert, of whose
parentage l knew nothing, except
that she was called Zara, the Beauti-
ful-no reason in the world why l,
the prince Abderah, only son of the
king, and heir to the kingly domain,
should have married the low-born
cara, of whom and whose antece-
dents nobody knew anything whatso-
ever, except that she was gifted with
strange gifts and had dropped in
upon the domain suddenly, as if
from another world
II did not love her; of that fact
/ am certain. / did not even respect
her; of that fact / am equally cer-
tain. hated her with an unaccount-
able perversity of hatred; of this
third fact am just as certain as of
the two preceding. Three very good
reasons why l should not have done
what did. Nevertheless, did it
did indeed wed her after the manner
Of my fathers, installing her, devil as
she was, in the ancestral palace of
an ancient and honorable race of
Saracenic kings.
True she was beautiful-strange
ly beautiful, in her way; but that
was no reason why I should have
married an adventures. 1t was ex-
actly because she was beautiful in
her way that 1 hated her. There
Is beauty of heaven: it pursues,
haunts. breaks like weird music in
all prescient dreams. I have con-
jured up its phantoms with hash
heesh, in opium browse, through
slumbrous nights of calm, opening
my eyes again upon earth with a wild
wish to die. There is a beauty of
earth it is like unto fagots under the
caldron of passion, like red wine in
the cup, like fitful fever in the blood.
1t is a glittering and sudden tiger,
that fever, that springs upon its prey
vehemently, feeding thereupon in the
jungle of home. There is a beauty
OF hell, and it stings while it fascin-
ates-stings scorpion like, fascinat-
ing, serpent like, with sinuous,
ioathsome, devilish fascination. This
last was the beauty OF cara, the
Beautiful; and it stung me. fascin-
ated me-fascinated me though I
hated, stung me though loathed.
Now l think of it, / fancy the
creatures fascination was in that
devilish eye of hers. 1t was-I recol-
lect it distinctly-it was small, scin-
hllant, and shot sudden, furtive rays
ut its victim; lurid, without white,
and all a single round, devilish
pupil; bulbously prominent with
iivid lids, and almost lashless edges:
oddly beautiful, strangely fascinat-
ing, intoxicating as the eye of an
Houri.
Thls was Zara's eye, and it fas-
slnated me with an unnatural fascin-
alton. I saw it day and night; and
the fever of its sting l mistook for
passion, though passion it was not.
1t was the ain rab that l pursued to
an evil destiny.
There is an imp of the perverse."
Abderah went on, his words rattling
like dry leaves in his parched throat.
AN imp of the perverse, which has
more hand in human affairs than hu-
manity in general would be willing
to acknowledge.
1t is the logical basis of all trag-
edy, the prompter of all suicide, the
demon of all that is terribly mex
plicable, as well as of all that is abb
surdly comical in human action. In
its play it is comedy, and you laugh;
in its serious moods it is tragedy,
often so original. so motiveless, so
apparently put of mere whim, that