I did it! Abdullah thought triumphantly. “Yes,” he said. “I have one hundred and eighty-nine kinds of men here. I think this ought to give you at least a general idea.”

He helped her unhook a number of the golden lamps and put them in a ring beside the bank. Then Abdullah showed her the pictures, holding them under a lamp first and then leaning them up against the bank. He began to feel like a pavement artist.

Flower-in-the-Night inspected each man as Abdullah showed him, absolutely impartially and with great concentration. Then she picked up a lamp and inspected the artist’s drawings all over again. This pleased Abdullah. The artist was a true professional. He had drawn men exactly as Abdullah asked, from a heroic and kingly person evidently taken from a statue, to the hunchback who cleaned shoes in the Bazaar, and had even included a self-portrait halfway through.

“Yes, I see,” Flower-in-the-Night said at last. “Men do vary a lot, just as you said. My father is not at all typical, and neither are you, of course.”

“So you admit I am not a woman?” said Abdullah.

“I am forced to do so,” she said. “I apologize for my error.” Then she carried the lamp along the bank, inspecting certain of the pictures a third time.

Abdullah noticed, rather nervously, that the ones she had singled out were the handsomest. He watched her leaning over them with a small frown on her forehead and a curly tendril of dark hair straying over the frown, looking thoroughly intent. He began to wonder what he had started.

Flower-in-the-Night collected the pictures together and stacked them neatly in a pile beside the bank. “It is just as I thought,” she said. “I prefer you to every single one of these. Some of these look far too proud of themselves, and some look selfish and cruel. You are unassuming and kind. I intend to ask my father to marry me to you, instead of to the Prince in Ochinstan. Would you mind?”

The garden seemed to swirl around Abdullah in a blur of gold and silver and dusky green. “I—I think that might not work,” he managed to say at last.

“Why not?” she asked. “Are you married already?”

“No, no,” he said. “It is not that. The law allows a man to have as many wives as he can afford, but—”

The frown came back to Flower-in-the-Night’s forehead. “How many husbands are women allowed?” she asked.

“Only one!” Abdullah said, rather shocked.

“That is extremely unfair,” Flower-in-the-Night observed musingly. She sat on the bank and thought. “Would you say it is possible that the Prince in Ochinstan has some wives already?”