He cast but a single
look on Guel-Bejaze's smiling lips, and asked for a kiss from them--that
was the only price he demanded.
Janaki seized his daughter's hand and placed it in the hand of Halil.
And now Halil held the warm, smooth little hand in his own big paw, he
felt its reassuring pressure, he saw the girl smile, he saw her lips
open to return his kiss, and still he did not believe his eyes--still he
shuddered at the reflection that when his lips should touch hers, the
girl would suddenly die away, become pale and cold. Only when his lips
at last came into contact with her burning lips and her bosom throbbed
against his bosom, and he felt his kiss returned and the warm pulsation
of her heart, then only did he really believe in his own happiness, and
held her for a long--oh, so long!--time to his own breast, and pressed
his lips to her lips over and over again, and was happier--happier by
far--than the dwellers in Paradise.
And after that they made the girl sit down between them, with her father
on one side and her husband on the other, and they took her hands and
caressed and fondled her to her heart's content. The poor maid was
quite beside herself with delight. She kept receiving kisses and
caresses, first on the right hand and then on the left, and her face was
pale no longer, but of a burning red like the transfigured rose whereon
a drop of the blood of great Aphrodite fell. And she promised her father
and her husband that she would tell them such a lot of things--things
wondrous, unheard of, of which they had not and never could have the
remotest idea.
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