Through the great open window, waves of pale moonlight surged into my
room.
A slender white figure was standing beside the bed where I lay.
"You, Tanit-Zerga!" I murmured. She laid a finger on her lips.
"Sh! Yes, it is I."
I tried to raise myself up on the bed. A terrible pain seized my
shoulder. The events of the afternoon came back to my poor harassed
mind.
"Oh, little one, if you knew!"
"I know," she said.
I was weaker than a baby. After the overstrain of the day had come a
fit of utter nervous depression. A lump rose in my throat, choking me.
"If you knew, if you only knew!... Take me away, little one. Get me
away from here."
"Not so loud," she whispered. "There is a white Targa on guard at the
door."
"Take me away; save me," I repeated.
"That is what I came for," she said simply.
I looked at her. She no longer was wearing her beautiful red silk
tunic. A plain white _haik_ was wrapped about her; and she had drawn
one corner of it over her head.
"I want to go away, too," she said in a smothered voice.
"For a long time, I have wanted to go away. I want to see Gâo, the
village on the bank of the river, and the blue gum trees, and the
green water.
"Ever since I came here, I have wanted to get away," she repeated,
"but I am too little to go alone into the great Sahara. I never dared
speak to the others who came here before you. They all thought only of
_her_.... But you, you wanted to kill her."