"Yes, I am tired with thinking. What is to be the end of this,

Merla? Where is our love drifting us to?"

"Why does my lord concern himself with that? We are in the hands of

Fate."

Stanhope moved impatiently.

"Our fate is what we make it."

"It is not wise to enquire about our fate," replied Merla, and he

saw her face grow grave with resolution in the dim light. "But I

can tell you, if you like, what it will be: when you are ready, you

will go back to your own people, your own life, and you will be

very happy."

"And you--?" asked Stanhope in a whisper.

"I shall then have lived my life. I shall die and be buried out

there," and she motioned to the desert. "I shall have given my lord

happiness for a time: think what delight, what honour!"

Stanhope shuddered.

"Don't, don't, I can't bear to hear you; do you ask nothing for

yourself from life?"

"Life has given me all now," returned Merla, with a proud smile on

her face.

"Why should we not go home to my land together?" said Stanhope

passionately, in that sudden revolt against the laws of custom that

stirs all humanity at times. "Why should I not take you to live

with me for always to be my wife? who would forbid me?"

Merla shook her head, and pressed hard on his hand lying beside her

on the sand.

"The sun cannot lift the black rock from the desert and take it to

dwell in the blue spaces; neither can the sun stay with the rock.

You are grieving for me; do not. I am quite happy. I accept what

must be. My life ends when you go."

For a wild moment it seemed to Stanhope that he must dare

everything and take her. After all, she was intelligent: she could

be educated. She was beautiful, youthful; and what a love she

poured out at his feet!--different in calibre, in nature,

different, from its root up, from any love he could hope to find

again--a love that asked absolutely nothing for itself, not even

the right to live, and yet would give its all unquestioningly,

unsparingly. It is not a toy to be thrown away lightly, and

Stanhope realised this.

"The blue spaces are cold and empty, Merla," he said, suddenly

catching her to his breast. "You must come with me."

"No, lord, it is impossible; you speak only for me," whispered

Merla, though she clasped his neck tightly. "You must go and live

happy, and I shall die happy; even in my grave I shall remember

your kisses."

* * * * *

An hour later, the moon was well up in the sky, though the light

was not yet brilliant, and they parted by the wall of the

cattle-byre with promises to meet on the morrow, and he turned and

left her standing in the shadow; but some instinct moved him, and

he returned and kissed her yet again, and said one more farewell;

then he took the narrow track leading down to the river, and Merla

knew that she must hasten home; for her father, who had been out in

the early evening, would be returning. Before she left she turned

back once more into the byre, and stood looking at the stars that

she had communed with so often: a great sadness fell on her

thoughts, a chill as after a final parting. As she turned to go,

her eyes fell on a grey patch on the byre floor--his coat! He had

left it behind. Merla gave a little laugh as she picked it up: the

parting seemed less final now. She would keep it till the morrow.

Would he want it? miss it? No, the night was so still and sultry;

and, throwing it over her arm, she passed onwards to her hut.

As she neared the enclosure, her heart beat rapidly. A light was

burning within the hut, and by the moonlight she saw the great

camel moving restlessly in the narrow space outside. Angry voices

reached her in sharp discussion--her father's and another. Just

inside the enclosure she paused and listened, trembling, uncertain

what this unusual clamour and strange voice might mean.

"I gave you my camel, my knife, and my carpet. Where is the Pearl I

was promised? Is not the moon at the full?"

Merla heard these words with a thrill passing through every fibre.

She knew her father had no pearl in his possession, but was not

her name "Pearl of the Desert"? Next there came some confused

murmur--seemingly words of apology--in her father's voice that she

could not catch, but the stranger interrupted angrily:

"Unhappy man! tricked seller, tricked buyer, would you know where

the Pearl is? would you know where your daughter hides? I have

heard that she has been seen with a stranger, a white-faced

stranger--I know not if he be a leper or an Englishman--" with a

bitter laugh, "but in either case I want her not. Come, give me my

knife, and I lead off my camel."

Merla's heart failed, for her father gave a shriek as he heard the

accusation, and a shower of oaths and imprecations came to her

shrinking ears. Nothing was clear any more; there was only clamour

and raving in the hut. But once she caught the words, "to the

river--does he go to the river?" and above all the storm of words

there was the awful sound of the sharpening of a knife.

Like a shadow, noiseless and silent, Merla crept swiftly, under the

shade of the camel's body, across the enclosure to the mud

partition behind which her youngest brother slept, and roused him.

"Nungoon!" she said breathlessly, gripping his shoulder, "take the

track to the river, and run for your life. You will overtake the

Englishman. Tell him this. 'Merla says: Run to the launch and get

off the land quickly, and never come back to Omdurman, or come with

a guard. They seek to kill you here.' Go, brother; run!"

The boy, startled from his sleep, gathered himself together and

rose. His sister, leaning over him with ashy face and fixed eyes,

seemed like Fate itself directing him. Moreover, Oriental youth is

accustomed to obey unquestioningly. Without a word, simply with a

sign of assent, he fled out of the enclosure, down the track to the

river.

Merla stepped back and out of the yard, and stood waiting, silent

as before; she had formed her resolution, and all fear was past.

The mats in front of the door were suddenly pushed aside, and a

streak of light fell across the yard, but it could not touch her,

sheltered by the wall. She saw her father rush out, wild-eyed, and

the long blade of the knife gleamed blue in the moonlight.

Then, as he dashed through the enclosure entrance, she moved her

feet suddenly, scraping the sand, and then fled, wrapped in

Stanhope's long light overcoat, up towards the desert, away from

the river. Krino, blinded, maddened by passion, glanced at the wall

whence came the scraping sound, and then, catching sight of a

flying form in English dress, plunged with a cry of triumph after

it. Merla fled like the wind along in the shadow of the wall,

keeping in the darkness, with her head down, fearing lest her bare

head or bare feet might betray her. But Krino's eyes were fixed on

the silvery grey of the English overcoat, and, blind to all else,

he raced on in the uncertain light with his eyes intent on the

shoulders between which he would plunge his knife. Up through the

heart of sleeping Omdurman, past silent huts and yellow walls that

gleamed pale in the moonlight, through the village to the desert,

hunted and hunter fled on, and Krino's heart rose in savage

triumph.

"Fool! he cannot escape me now; by the river--yes, but not in the

desert; he cannot escape."

And the desert was reached and entered, and still the two noiseless

shadows fled over the sand.

Merla's strength was failing: her sight was reeling; she could run

no more. Only the joy of knowing that each step led the enemy

farther from her loved one had supported her till now. Now he was

safe, he must be away on the friendly river. There had been ample

time. Not now would it be possible for Krino to reach the river

before her lover had embarked. It was well. All was well! And the

black sand spun round her in the moonlight, as she heard the hiss

of her father's breath behind her. She wavered. With a bound the

man threw himself forward. One stab, and the keen blade sank

through the flesh below the shoulder, driving her forward, and she

fell face downwards on the sand.

Blind still with fury, the Soudanese bent down, tore at the head to

drag it back that he might slash it from the body, and turned up

the face to the moonlight. Fixed in agony and triumph, it looked

back at him--the dead face of his daughter, the PEARL OF THE

DESERT.

IV

The last flare of the sunset was falling on the walls of Jerusalem,

staining them crimson, and flooding all the enchanting circle of

the hills that lie round the city with rosy light. Low down in one

of the depressions, where the long sun-rays could not reach, and

the olive-trees looked grey in the twilight, stood the grim, white

Monastery of the Holy Virgin. The air was sweet and cool here, far

from the pollution of the city, and the evening sky stretched fair

and radiant above the purple hills. Unbroken quiet reigned, and

only one thing in the landscape moved--the figure of a girl

ascending swiftly a narrow, stony road under the shadow of the

wall. She seemed burdened with many things that she was carrying,

and oppressed with some haunting fear, for she looked back

frequently, and then pressed on with redoubled speed. The stony

track brought her at last to the corner of the enclosure of

olive-trees belonging to the monastery; it branched here, one path

leading straight to the gates of the building, the other skirting

the olive-wood plantation, and then passing on out into the barren

hills and open country towards Jericho. The girl took the second

track, and here, under the friendly shade of the sheltering trees,

she walked more erect and easily. When she reached the farther

corner of the plantation she stopped and listened, gazing round

her. There was no sound, the light was failing, the hush deepening.

"Nicholas," she breathed in a clear whisper, leaning on the low

stone plantation wall, "are you there?" A rustling of some long

robe against bushes answered her--the olive branches were pushed

aside, and the figure of a Greek priest came from between them.

With a smile of intense joy on his face he leant over the wall, and

clasped the girl's two soft hands in his.

"Esther!" he whispered back, "you have come; you have decided then,

you are ready?"

"I am quite ready," answered the girl, pressing close to the wall

and lifting her face; the last gleam of gold light from the rising

ridge to the west touched it, and showed it was very fair. "If you

are sure it is right, if you have faith in Jehovah to lead us."

The priest's face, pale and emaciated, with the rapt look of the

visionary stamped upon it, lighted up suddenly with a new

exaltation.

"I am quite sure. Last night when I was praying, still in doubt,

before the great crucifix, I heard a voice from above saying:

'Nicholas, you are absolved from further prayer and penance here.

Go forth with the maiden you love and serve Me in the world. The

joy of human hearts singing to Me in grateful praise is more

pleasing to Me than these groans and tears and prayers. I have

created the blue sky and the laughing seas and the green hills; go

forth and see my works, and praise Me.'"

The Jewish girl had listened intently, her face as rapt as his

while he spoke, the fire of joy glowing in her eyes.

"Come, then, at once," she murmured in an ardent whisper, and

Nicholas stepped over the low boundary into the hill road, now

wrapped in darkness. Before them still glimmered dimly the white

outlines of the monastery behind the trees. The man stood

motionless, gazing at them, the girl's hand tightly clasped in his

and held against his breast.

"The agony, the misery I have suffered behind those walls," he

muttered, "for sixteen years!"

"It is over," murmured the girl; "come away to the hills; we have

no time to lose."

She stooped to gather up the objects in the road. "I have brought

you these things," she said confusedly, hardly audibly. "Change

into them quickly, and then follow me up the road. No, I will take

all the rest," she added, as he took the bundle of clothing she

gave him and stretched out his hand for the other smaller things.

"Hasten, Nicholas, it is so dangerous here!" With this parting

entreaty she went on up the road carrying the bundles.

After she had gone a little way she paused and listened--all was

quite still--the stars now showed fitfully in the deepening purple

of the sky, a little breeze blew gently up from the wilderness

towards Jerusalem. The girl sat down by the wall, with her back

against it, and her hands clasped round her knees. Her face had a

strange, wonderful beauty as she sat waiting, white-skinned and

softly-moulded, with resolute, dark eyebrows drawn straight across

the calm forehead. A few moments passed, and then Nicholas

approached; his flowing priest's robes were gone, the high,

straight, black hat of the order was no longer on his head: it was

bare, and the long uncut hair, as the Greeks wear it, was twisted

in two thick fair coils round his head. Esther sprang up,

untwisting a broad sash from her waist.

"Take this! No wait! let me twist it round your head--yes, so. Now

it looks like a Jewish turban. You have the robe and the hat with

you?--yes, bring them, bring them," and they hurried on, fleeing

away from the monastery. Esther knew a short track across the hills

which in a little while joins the great main road to Jericho, that

descends down and down through the bare rolling hills of the

wilderness to the fair plain of the Jordan and the shores of the

Dead Sea. For the first few miles they sped on in silence with

clasped hands, the night wind rushing against their faces, and no

sound coming to their ears but the occasional whine of the hungry

hyenas, prowling over the stony, starlit hills. In the man's breast

swelled an exaltation beyond all words: it lifted him up so, that

his feet seemed flying over the rugged ground without touching it;

the night-wind filled his veins with fire: his brain seemed alight

and glowing. For years past the bare stone walls of his monk's cell

had given him pictures painted by his fevered fancy of such a walk

as this through starlit, open spaces--a walk to life and freedom.

For years his hot, caged feet had paced the stone cell floor,

aching to pass the threshold; and for the last month ever since

from amongst the olive-trees he had seen the fair Jewish girl pass

by, a new vision had come upon those white-washed walls to add its

torture to the rest. Evening after evening he had stolen out at

sunset to see her pass, as she came and went from the little

cluster of Jewish houses on the ridge beyond the monastery and

watched the sunlight play upon her brows and hair. Could this

thing, so divinely beautiful, be the creation of the devil to

destroy men's souls? His reason revolted against it. If so, the

warm sunlight and radiant sky and air, the flowers and the purple

hills, his weary eyes strained out to must be also the devil's

work, for all these things were akin, and the woman passing amongst

them was but the masterpiece made by the same hand.

"Say," he had said wearily, one night, to a monk passing him like a

silent shadow on his way to his cell. "Is all the world the work of

the devil?"

"Nay, brother, what blasphemy!" returned the other, startled beyond

measure. "It is all the work of God" and Nicholas had passed into

his cell well pleased. And the next evening he had called softly to

the masterpiece of the Creator, as she went by, and the girl,

startled and fearful at first, had spoken a few words out of sheer

pity for the hungry, lonely soul looking out so wistfully at her;

and then how soon had come other meetings, the plan to escape--that

final vision which had seemed to justify him,--and now the flight!

"Will the boat be there! will they wait for us?" he asked eagerly,

as they walked swiftly on.

"Yes, I heard the boat was coming over from the Jewish Colony

beyond the Dead Sea, and I sent word down it was to take me in it

when it left again," the girl replied, "We shall get down there

to-morrow evening; we will go to old Solomon's house; he will let

us stay with him one night, and in the morning we must get down to

the shore and the boat."

Nicholas pressed her hand as they walked on. How wise she was, this

little Jewish girl! She had lived her short life in the world, and

knew her way about in it so well. And he, so much older, felt like

a child beside her, after all those long, deadening, numbing years

in the monastery.

Five miles more of the white, stony road were traversed, winding in

and out, but always descending between the barren desolate hills of

the wilderness, and then Esther said with a little sob in her

voice:

"We must stop here now and rest, I am so tired. I cannot go any

further to-night."

"Tired?" he echoed wonderingly. Could he ever feel tired now? His

feet seemed borne on wings. But he stopped, and bending over her,

lifted and carried her tenderly from the starlit road to a large

rock jutting out from the hillside. Here, in the shadow on the

farther side, they lay down, and the girl fell at once into the

deep sleep of utter bodily fatigue. The man lay open-eyed clasping

her to him, his brain on fire with freedom, listening with joy to

the cries of the wandering wild animals amongst the hills.

The following evening, late, they reached the plain. The wilderness

lay behind them, and in front, beyond the green darkness of the

trees, they knew the starlight was gleaming on the Dead Sea. The

heat down here was suffocating, and their weary feet moved on

slowly through the village--a collection of a few white flat-roofed

houses, which are all that now mark the spot where stood once the

rich, mighty city of Jericho. In the last house shone a light, and

Esther led Nicholas towards it.

Solomon was waiting for them, and had prepared for them his best

upper room--a little narrow apartment, with windows facing towards

the sea--where supper was laid, and opening from this a tiny

sleeping chamber. A swinging lamp hung over the centre table, and

Solomon's younger brother waited on them. Esther, with the dust of

the road washed from her skin, looked very fair, sitting under the

light of the lamp, her eyes glowing with the mysterious fires of

love and joy, and the two Jews sat listening to her eagerly as she

talked to them, telling them the news of her family and friends in

Jerusalem.

"If I could only go up to the city," sighed the younger man. "But I

cannot walk, and I have no horse," and he grew sullen and dejected

and said no more, while the elder continued to ask and be answered

a hundred questions about the life and doings of the city.

That night, past midnight, when the whole plain of Jericho lay

wrapped in a deep hush, and not one light gleamed in the darkness

of the village, a carriage drawn by two foam-covered horses

thundered down the last steep descent of the road from Jerusalem

into the village, and dashed through it straight to Solomon's

dwelling. Esther, asleep in the upper room, with Nicholas' head

pillowed on her shoulder, heard the clatter of wheels and awoke

suddenly, all her body growing rigid with terror.

"Nicholas, awake! they have followed us!" She sprang from the bed,

and opening the window noiselessly, looked out. The night was quite

dark, but by straining her eyes she could descry the form of a

covered carriage below, and two dark figures stood hammering on the

house-door. The sounds rang reverberating through the dwelling, and

disturbing the still, calm air without, laden with the scent of

myrtle and orange-flower. A window above opened, and the old Jew

looked out.

"Who knocks?" he called.

"Priests from Jerusalem, from the Monastery of the Holy Virgin. One

whom we seek is within; let us enter." Esther drew back into the

room, and saw Nicholas standing behind her, his face haggard with

despair. "Jehovah, then, is not with us."

Esther pressed his hand.

"Esther is with you," she murmured softly. "You shall not go back,

they shall not touch you. Give me your priest's clothing, and stay

here."

Before he could answer she had snatched up the garments and was

gone, fastening the door behind her. Outside on the stairway she

met old Solomon, coming slowly down to answer the imperative

summons from below.

"Delay all you can in admitting them," she whispered, then ran past

him, fleet of foot, up the stairs to the Jews' room--the door stood

open as Solomon had left it. She entered, and stood within in the

darkness.

"Hiram," she called softly, "you wished to go up to Jerusalem. Now

is your opportunity. Get up, put on these things, and the priests

will take you back in their carriage." She heard the man rise and

bound to the floor.

"Is that you, Esther? Have they sent from the monastery to take

Nicholas?"

"Yes," returned Esther in an agonised voice. "But you will not let

them take him? See, Hiram, they cannot hurt you; they will not

recognise you, nor suspect you here in the darkness, in the dress

of Nicholas. You need not speak. They will hasten you into the

carriage. To-morrow when they discover you, it will be too late for

them to overtake us. We shall be gone, and _you_ they will not

want. They cannot put you in their monastery. They must release

you, and you--will be at the gates of Jerusalem."

Her low voice, thrilled with her agony of fear and suspense: there

was the very soul of persuasion in it. As she pleaded in the

darkness, she heard the man breathing quickly, and shuffling his

feet on the floor. He was hesitating. He longed to go up to the

city, but this seemed a dangerous expedient. Yet it would serve

Esther, and she was very fair, and was of his own kindred. There

was a noise and clamour downstairs beneath them--the sound of the

slow unbarring of bolts, and angry voices without. Esther drew

nearer, and her voice grew sharp with fear:

"Hiram, as they are pushing you to the carriage, I will throw

myself into your arms, and you shall kiss me your last farewell, as

if you were Nicholas."

In the darkness she felt that the man stretched out his hand.

"Give me the clothes; I will go."

Esther threw them into his arms, and darted out, closing the door,

and hung over the stair-rail. There was no light, but she could

hear the heavy footsteps coming up. Nearer they came, and nearer,

stumbling, and Solomon's step behind, as he followed the priests,

grumbling and protesting. Now they were almost opposite the door of

the room where Nicholas crouched waiting.

"He is not here! he is not here!" wailed out Esther's voice

suddenly from above, and the priests hearing her, rushed up the

stairs to where she stood, passing by, forgotten, the door of the

lower room.

Rigid and tense she stood before the door as if guarding it, her

arms outstretched before it. The first priest pushed her roughly on

one side, the second opened the door, and beyond, dimly outlined

against the open window square, was visible the draped figure and

heavy hat of a priest. With a shout of triumph they darted forward,

and Esther gave a great cry of wild despair. The priests dragged

him out unresisting, and forced him down the stairs. No word came

from him. Solomon, leaning back against the wall to let them pass,

stretched out his hand to the weeping Esther; but she passed him,

crying and hurrying after her lover. Down in the passage the large

door stood wide, showing the waiting carriage in the dim starlight

of the sultry night. As they pushed him to the door, he suddenly

wrested himself free for an instant, and Esther rushed into his

arms.

"Oh, Nicholas, Nicholas! Good-bye!"

The priests seized her by the shoulder, wrenching her away, and one

hurled her with a fury of loathing back into the darkness of the

passage. Then they forced their prisoner forward, stumbling,

resisting, to the carriage. The door snapped to, the horses plunged

forward, and the carriage thundered away into the night. Esther

picked herself up from where she had fallen in the passage, and

bruised and trembling, but with a joyous smile, rushed up the

narrow stairway.

"Solomon!" she said, whispering in the old Jew's ear, "Hiram has

gone in the place of Nicholas! Nicholas is safe here. Oh, help us

to get to the sea!"

Solomon shook with laughter as he heard--for a Jew loves dearly a

clever ruse--and he stroked Esther's soft hair as she stood by him.

"Light us a lamp, and let us get away to the shore, that we can

embark and be away on the water at dawn, before they discover it

and return," Then she passed by him and entered the room where

Nicholas awaited her. Solomon trimmed a lamp and a lantern for

them, and put up some bread and meat for their journey, his

shoulders shaking with inward chuckles as he did so.

"Hiram a priest!" he repeated to himself; "that is a joke indeed,

and Esther, what a quick brain she has--a true daughter of Israel!"

and Esther was murmuring within to Nicholas:

"Jehovah has saved us. Now let us hasten down to the sea."

The next morning, when the dawn broke soft and rosy over the fair

plain of Jericho, the sea that is called the Dead Sea, yet seems,

in its glorious wealth of colour and sparkling brilliance to be

rather the emblem of Life, glowed and flashed like a huge sapphire

in the sun's rays, and at its calm edge, that meets the shore

without a ripple, swayed gently the ship of the pilgrims from the

Jewish Colony.

Nicholas and Esther sat side by side watching the pilgrims' oars

dip quietly in perfect rhythm as they sang. And the song of praise

went up through the golden air, and echoed back to the sunny,

silent strand vanishing behind them.

V

Dawn was breaking over the desert. Steadily the triumphant rose

spread upward in the pale opalescent sky, and broad waves of light

rippled slowly over the wide level plain. The little keen breeze of

the morning, the herald of the dawn that runs ever in front of its

chariot, stirred the branches of the palm trees by the Nile, and

played a moment idly with the flap of a tent door before it passed

onward. Here, some two miles away from cool Assouan, lying out in

the desert, was the Bishâreen encampment, and the last small tent

of the long line had its door open, and the flap of the awning

loose, with which the morning wind stopped to play.

Within, seated cross-legged on the scarlet rug and sheepskin which

formed their bed, were two girls braiding their hair before a tiny

square of glass, which each in turn held up for the other.

"How cold the morning is! How I hate to hear the wind shake the

door flaps," one said and shivered.

"Doolga, don't; you are holding the glass all crooked; I cannot see

myself. Why should you feel cold this morning of all others, when

Sheik Ilbrahim dar Awaz is coming to claim you?" returned the

other, and she laughed softly, with her slim fingers busy trying to

bind up and restrain her dusky cloud of hair.

How lovely she was, this young Bishâreen, who had looked on the

yearly fall of the Nile but fifteen times--lovely as the tall

slender palm of the oasis, or the gold light on the river at

sunset. Tall and straight, with the stately carriage and proud head

of her race; smooth and supple, with every limb faultlessly moulded

under the clear, lustrous skin.

"Silka, Silka! I cannot marry the Sheik. I am in terror of him.

Help me, save me!"

The little glass fell on the blanket between them. In the warm rose

glow now filling the tent, Doolga's face was ashen-coloured.

Awe-struck and startled Silka gazed wide-eyed upon her. For an

instant the two girls sat staring in silence into each other's

eyes. So much alike they were that one face seemed the reflection

of the other, only there was a bloom, a light, a sweetness on

Silka's that was missing in the other.

"Why?" she breathed after that first startled silence, "what is the

matter, Doolga? Tell me; tell me everything."

She drew nearer her sister, and put one arm round her. The pink

light from without, striking through the tent canvas, touched her

face, showing its delicately-cut, exquisite features and the tender

love filling the eyes.

"I hate the Sheik!" sobbed Doolga, putting down her head on the

other's soft bare shoulder; "I don't want him. I love _him_!"

And Silka felt that everything indeed was told. The incoherent,

inexplicable words were clear enough to her. She trembled all over,

and the two girls clung together in the little tent, while the

noise of a large encampment awakening grew about them outside.

Suddenly Doolga grew calm; she lifted her face, and Silka saw it

was grey, with great lines of anguish cut in it, and her heart

seemed to contract with pain, for she loved Doolga better than

anything she knew in the world, and Doolga's suffering was her

suffering.

"I thought, father thought you would be glad to marry the Sheik,"

she faltered.

"I cannot. I will throw myself into the Nile rather; Silka, help

me!"

"How can I?"

"_You_ marry the Sheik!" Doolga's eyes were alight with flame.

Something of the tiger's glare shone in them. She bent forward and

seized the other girl's wrists in a feverish grip. The clasp hurt

and burnt like fire. Silka drew back instinctively, paling with

surprise.

"I marry the Sheik?" she repeated, "but--"

"Yes, you _must_! Oh, Silka, you have always loved me: save me now.

I cannot. It will be death to me. I love--I love--" she hesitated;

then added, "so much. You love no one. Why not then the Sheik? Do

this for me. I will think of you, bless you always. Save me from

death; save me from the Nile!"

The burning words, uttered low, in that strange, strained voice she

hardly recognised, fell upon Silka like drops of molten lead. Her

sister seemed mad: her eyes started forward from her livid face:

her clasp on Silka's wrists gripped like iron. Silka's heart was

overwhelmed with pity and distress.

"How can I?" she murmured back, bewildered by the sudden revelation

of misery in the other--this other that had grown up with her,

played with her, slept with her side by side through the soft, hot

nights when they had lain counting the stars through a chink in the

tent. Side by side their bodies had nestled together, and side by

side their hearts had always been.

"You have but to unveil your face to the Sheik," returned the other

quickly, eagerly, almost furiously, "and he will take you instead

of me. Think, Silka! the head of the tribe, fifty camels, a

thousand goats--" She stopped in her eager outpour of persuasion.

Silka was looking at her straight from under her dark, level brows,

her lips curled in a sorrowful disdain.

"Have his riches any weight with you, Doolga? Why do you offer them

to me?" she said proudly.

"Because you are free: you do not love," impetuously returned the

other with glib, persistent vehemence. "I would marry the Sheik, I

would prize his flocks, his riches; but I love--I love--I cannot!"

"Whom do you love so much?" replied Silka sadly. "Why have you not

told me? Who is he?"

The girls were seated on the bed in one corner of the tent close

beside its stretched canvas wall. There was a little eyelet, a

square hole with a flap buttoned down over it, on a level with

their heads. At Silka's question Doolga turned to the canvas, and,

with an impatient movement, tore up the flap and looked out. The

plain was bathed in gold: above, the pure, pink glow still hung in

the limpid sky. The encampment was astir. The tents were open, and

little cooking fires, sending up their spirals of blue smoke were

dotted over the sand. At a few paces' distance from the main row of

tents, the camels, lying down, made a velvet-like patch of shade on

the gleaming gold of the sand, and herds of white goats stood near,

their silky coats flashing in the morning sunlight. Silka looked

out, too, over her sister's shoulder. She saw the burnished gold of

the plain and the luminous sky, and between these two a figure

that stood by a low brown tent, with the sunlight falling full on

its noble brow and the straight profile turned towards them. Doolga

wrung Silka's hand, that she still clutched, as they knelt side by

side on the sheepskin looking through the eyelet.

"That is he!" she said, and Silka's lips parted suddenly in a

little scream of pain.

"What is the matter?" asked Doolga roughly, drawing her back from

the aperture, and letting the flap fall.

"You hurt me," replied Silka. "Is that the one you love?" Her voice

sounded tremulous: her eyes, fixed on Doolga, seemed to widen with

increasing pain.

"Yes, that is he; that is Melun," answered Doolga softly. "Is he

not handsome, wonderful? Why do you stare so? Might not any girl

love him?"

A little smile played round Silka's lips.

"Yes, indeed, any girl might love him," she answered.

"But not as I do--no, never! Oh, Silka, I cannot tell you how I

love him. More than the Nile, more than the stars, more than we

have ever loved each other! I have met him often when I went to

draw water, and sometimes we have stayed together in the

palm-grove. I was so happy till father sold me to the Sheik; and

now I must part from Melun for ever! Do not make me, dear, darling

Silka; do not send me to the Nile!" She spoke with increasing

excitement, with passionate intensity. She was close to Silka, and

she laid one arm softly round her neck and put her face close to

hers. Such a beautiful oval face it was!--the face that Silka

loved: as she looked at it, her heart melted within her.

"See, dearest Silka," continued the other coaxingly, "you have

nothing to do but to unveil before the Sheik; you are just like me,

only a thousand times lovelier. He will not want me then, but you.

You can say to our father: As I am fairer than my sister, he will

give you two more camels. Father will be pleased with the camels,

and I shall be left free to marry Melun."

"But suppose I don't want to marry the Sheik either," said Silka,

slowly stroking the curls of the sheepskin as she looked down upon

it.

"But why should you not? he has flocks and herds; he will give you

necklets and bracelets, and a camel to ride, and take you to the

oasis? Why should you mind?"

"It is late, Doolga. Father will be returning soon. Go, fill your

urns at the well."

"But will you promise--?"

"I can promise nothing yet. Go, go, leave me, you must let me think

a little."

Doolga got up well satisfied. She knew Silka had never refused her

anything since they had first played as babies together in the

sand. Silka loved her. Silka had never denied her anything.

She took her large earthenware jar, poised it on her shoulder, and

went out of the tent into the hot light. Silka lay on the sheepskin

where her sister had left her, and turned her face to it, shaken

with a storm of feeling that convulsed her slender body from head

to foot. She heard none of the cheerful sounds of life stirring

round the tent; she heard only Doolga's threat of the Nile, her

passionate pleading for help. Her face was buried in the sheepskin,

yet she saw plainly in the wall of darkness before her eyeballs

the figure of the Bishâreen standing out against the pink light of

the morning sky. So it was Melun that Doolga loved! And to Melun

all her own passionate impulsive heart had been given through her

eyes. Had she not, morning after morning, gazed out through the

square eyelet to catch a glimpse of him as he came from his tent,

dressed in his snowy white linen tunic, and with countless strings

of coloured beads twisted round the firm column of his throat and

hanging from his arms? Melun, the necklace-seller of Assouan!

Melun, that the foreign tourists stopped to gaze after, as he

walked with slow and stately steps beneath the lebek trees on the

"boulvard" by the Nile. Young and straight and slender, with a

beautiful face and form, he never offered his wares for sale. He

simply stood and looked at the tourists, and they came and bought

largely. They came up to him with curious eyes to chaffer for his

blue-glass beads, and stare at his smooth, perfectly-moulded arms

and throat, at the wonderfully straight features, and the lofty

carriage of his head, at the thick hair, like fine, black wool,

that waved above his forehead and clustered round the nape of his

neck, interwoven with his brilliant blue beads. Ah! how she loved

Melun! how she had dreamed of the day when her elder sister,

happily married, she herself could go to her father and say, "Let

Melun, the necklace-seller, come to the tent and see my face." And

now, not for him, but for the old hard-visaged Sheik, she was asked

to unveil. "I cannot do it; no, I cannot," she muttered to herself,

and the thought of Melun came to her softly. "I have but to look at

him, and he must love me; he is mine." Did not her mirror tell her

this each morning? Had not her sister but now said the same? She

smiled to herself, and balm seemed poured through her. Then there

came another thought piercing her like a dagger. Melun is not mine,

but hers. She loves him; he loves her. They have met in the

palm-grove. Never, never, could she unveil for him now. He must

never see her. Though he loved her a thousand times, yet would

she never take him from Doolga. Doolga, bright, graceful, and

beautiful, the light of her eyes, the joy of the tent! could she

bear to see her brought through the door cold, motionless,

lifeless, killed by the embrace of the Nile?

When Doolga returned with the flush of warmth on her cheek and the

jar full of shimmering water on her shoulder, Silka was sitting

upright on the bed with dry, wide eyes. One glance at her told

Doolga that she herself was free, that the other would take up her

burden and bear it for her. She crossed over with a quick beautiful

movement, lithe, free, untamed.

"Darling Silka, you will consent? you will promise?"

"Do you meet him often in the palm-grove?" returned Silka; it was

now her eyes that were full of flame as she met her sister's.

"Why--Melun? Yes, whenever it was possible. To-night there will be

no moon; I was going, but why should you ask?" She bent forward

quickly, eagerly, some faint suspicion stirring in her.

"If I do this for you--if I save you--if I show myself to the

Sheik, then you must let me go to the palm-grove to-night."

Doolga fell back from her, surprise and terror and horror mingling

in her face. She clasped her small, soft hands together and wrung

them.

"Oh, Silka! you know, if he sees you, he will not look at me again;

he will not care."

Silka smiled a slow, painful smile.

"Do you not see?" she said in a whisper. "I shall go as you. Who

will know it is not you? Not Melun. He will be expecting you! he

has never seen me. I will not betray myself nor you, but this is my

condition. To-morrow I go in your stead to the Sheik; to-night, I

go in your stead to Melun."

Doolga stared at her, barely comprehending.

"But why--why?" she stammered in return.

"I go to the Sheik in your stead because I love you, and to Melun

in your stead because I love him," replied Silka firmly.

There was a smile in her eyes, but her lips were pale, compressed,

and sad. Doolga gazed at her in silence, both hands clasped tightly

now over her swelling breast. Astonishment, gratitude, mistrust,

and jealousy were all struggling together within it for mastery.

"You love Melun too?" she said at last. "Then why do you not take

him? One glance from you and he is yours."

"He was yours first," answered Silka miserably. "I cannot take him

from you."

"And you will marry the Sheik to save me?"

"Yes," replied Silka.

Then Doolga fell on her knees and thanked Silka and kissed her, and

Doolga's kisses were very sweet, and while those lips pressed hers

Silka forgot everything else in the world. At last Doolga said in a

sudden recrudescence of jealousy:

"In the grove to-night you will not--" and the rest was whispered.

"No," answered Silka; "I am the bride of the Sheik. You need fear

nothing. But I must see Melun; all my life long I shall feed on

your happiness. There will be nothing else for me. I shall live on

it. To do this I must have a vision of it before I go, and it will

stay by me for ever."

That afternoon the tent was gay with unrolled silks and scarlet

rugs, and coffee stood out in little porcelain cups upon the floor,

for the Sheik Ilbrahim had come to the final parley for his bride.

He sat before the coffee-cups on a black goat-skin, the pipe of

honour placed beside him. A grave, quiet man, with kind eyes, but

already far on in the winter of life. Opposite him sat his host,

the owner of the tent and father of the girls. Shrewd-eyed,

keen-faced, quietly he did his bargaining. Earlier in the day the

elder girl had laid the plan before him: herself for Melun, the

necklace-seller of Assouan, who owned neither camels nor goats, but

would pay well in silver straight from the hands of the tourists;

her younger sister for the Sheik, who would give doubtless two more

camels for her wonderful beauty. The father listened placidly. It

was not a bad bargain.

"But," he answered finally, "why should you not go to the Sheik now

for two camels and by and by another will come for your sister and

give four camels. Then shall I have had six for the two of you."

"But she may die," objected the ready Doolga, the keen-witted

daughter of her father. "Better secure the camels now, father."

"True, she may die, and the bargain be lost," mused the father,

and at last he spread out his hands with a gesture of conclusion.

"It is for the Sheik to decide," he said merely, and Doolga was

content. She knew beforehand what the Sheik would decide when he

saw her sister. Now the two girls sat clasped in each other's arms

behind a curtain hung across a corner of the tent, and waited

silently till they should be summoned.

"If she be fairer than your daughter Doolga," they heard the Sheik

say good-humouredly, "she must be fair indeed, and worth four

camels. Let me see her."

At those words Silka rose and stepped from behind the little

curtain. With timid steps she came forward to the centre of the

tent. A linen tunic clasped round the base of her throat fell

almost to her ankles, caught lightly in at the waist by a scarlet

cord; loose sleeves falling from the shoulder half-concealed her

rounded arms; but her lovely face, with its arching brows and

liquid eyes, looked out unveiled from her frame of cloudy hair, and

drew the Sheik's heart towards her. Wrapt in the enthusiasm of the

holiest of all loves, that of sister for sister, tense with the

ardour of her sacrifice, a light shone out from the tender soul

within that fired all her beauty, making it burn like the sun, and

intoxicate like wine.

Her father eyed her, and wished he had asked five camels.

The Sheik stretched out his right hand towards her.

"Are you pleased to come, my daughter, to the oasis of roses with

me?"

"My lord beholds his slave," answered Silka, and her eyes were full

of light, and her lips were curved in smiles.

"My camels, four of the best, will find their stable behind your

tent to-night," said the Sheik to her father, and he filled the cup

he had drunk from and handed it to the girl. Silka raised it to her

lips.

"Does it please my lord that he fetch me to-morrow, and leave me in

my father's tent to-night?"

The Sheik laughed good-naturedly, his eyes fixed on the pleading,

youthful face.

"It pleases me not to leave you; but if you ask me, little one, I

will not refuse. Let it be so."

As he spoke Silka drained the coffee-cup he had given her, and by

so doing bound herself to him henceforward.

There was no moon that night; it was dark with the darkness of the

desert, and the splendour of its million stars. As Silka came

softly from the tent she looked upwards; the wild heaving of her

bosom seemed repeated in that restless, pulsing light above. The

soft breath of the desert came to her; it whispered of Melun

waiting for her in the palm-grove. How happy she was! This was

life: one night of life was hers--no more. With the dawn came the

end. This was her first--her last--night of life, but how exquisite

it was! The voice of the desert sang in her ears, the light soft

sand caressed her flying feet. Within bounded her heart, buoyant

with leaping joy. Never had she realised the strength of her swift,

straight ankles--never till now the free, joyous power in her

supple limbs.

Before her rose the palm-grove, distinct in all its beauty of

feathery-topped trees, against the gorgeous starlit sky. By her

side gleamed now the line of the river, silver in the starlight;

smooth and lovely, studded with its fierce black rocks, flanked by

its orange sand, and here and there, on its edge in the radiant

darkness, rose a lofty palm lifting its swaying branches towards

the jewelled sky. Silka looked at the river curiously. Now she was

keenly alive; life was sharp and alert in every fibre, but it was

the last. This night of life was also a night of good-byes.

To-morrow she would look on the river again, but she would be dead

then--dead to joy and to love; it would only be Doolga who would be

living rich in both these gifts--gifts given by her. The thought

ran through her with a tumultuous gladness.

She entered the palm-grove and went straight to the tree that

Doolga had told her of, a withered palm. A figure sat at the foot

of the tree. The starlight gleamed on its white clothing. Silka's

feet stopped mechanically as she saw him; her heart beat so that

she could scarcely breathe; but he had caught sight of her, and

sprang to his feet and came towards her. How wonderful he was with

his fine head set on that long, firm throat, and how sweet the face

when his beautiful mouth broke into smiles as he saw her!

"Doolga!" he exclaimed, and then paused. She heard the little note

of wonder, of joy, in his voice, as she looked up at him in the

soft starlight, filtered through the palms. She was close to him,

and his voice, his presence was a new wonder to her.

"You are lovelier to-night than ever before. You have a new beauty,

what is it?" and he stretched out his arms passionately to her and

enfolded her in them close to his breast and kissed her. Then in

one moment did the rose of life, that unfolds slowly for most

mortals petal by petal, bloom suddenly for her whole and complete,

and fill her with its wild fragrance, overwhelming her senses. The

happiness of a hundred lives was compressed into that one perfect

moment when his lips touched hers, and she saw his face hang over

hers in the starlight, blazing with the fires of love.

"This then is life," she thought, as she put her arms round his

neck. "This is what I am giving to Doolga."

"Am I really more beautiful to-night than I have been?" she asked

presently, as they sat crouched close side by side at the foot of

the palm, looking towards the silver river.

"A thousand times!" he answered passionately. "I have never loved

you, never seen you as I do to-night."

"Then you must always remember me as you see me now. However Doolga

looks to you in the future, always remember this night, and how you

loved her then."

And he took her more closely into his arms, and pressed kisses on

her eyes, and told her in low murmured words of the tent he was

preparing for her, pitched where the cool breeze from the Nile

would reach them, and of the coming sunsets when she would sit

awaiting his return in the doorway, and of the still radiant hours

of the desert night which would pass over them full of delirious

joys; and the girl listened and lived out her life in those moments

against his heart. And ever as she listened, the thought of the

Sheik and his withered arms rose before her. Still it was Doolga's

future she looked into, the secrets of Doolga's happiness she

learned. As often as he murmured, "Doolga!" and caressed her, a

wave of joy passed through her.

Three hours before the dawn they parted, and with slow, sad steps

she returned to her father's tent. Her strength was spent. Life

and she had finally separated. Entering the tent with noiseless

feet, no sound disturbed the sleeping chief, and she crept to where

her sister sat up, wild-eyed and sleepless, on the bed.

"This he gave to Doolga," she said, with her lips pressed to

Doolga's ear, and passed over her head a necklace of faultless

beads of jade.

* * * * *

The following day, when the last flare of the sunset lit up the sky

with flame, and the delicate branches of the palms of the oasis

showed before them tipped with gold, the Sheik Ilbrahim bent over

his bride sitting before him on the camel, decked out with gold

ornaments in her hair. He saw her smiling, and a glory that was not

of the sunset on her face.

"Of what is my beloved one thinking?" he asked her.

She looked up, but she did not see his face above her. She saw only

the tent where the wind from the Nile could come, and Doolga within

radiant with the joy she had given her.

"Of what should your slave be thinking, lord," she answered, "but

love and happiness?"

VI

It was evening. A sky of purest emerald, luminous, transparent, and

divinely calm, stretched over the city of Damascus, that lies in

its white glory, wrapped round by its mantle of foliage, in the

heart of the burning desert--unhurt, cool, invulnerable in the jaws

of the all-devouring desert sand. In the East, with the first cool

breath of evening comes a spirit of rejoicing: the heat and burden

of the day are over, and there is one hour of pure delight before

the darkness. This hour had come to Damascus: the roses lifted

their heads in the garden, the birds burst into joyous floods of

song, and the trees waved and spread their branches to the little

breeze that came rippling through the crystal air.

Almost on the confines of the city, where the belt of protecting

verdure grows thin and the gaunt face of the desert presses against

the city walls, rose the square, white dwelling of Ahmed Ali, and

his garden was the largest and most beautiful of the city. High

white walls enclosed it on every side, and from the broad,

travelled highway that ran beside it the dusty and wearied wayfarer

often lifted his eyes to the profusion of gay roses, the syringa,

and star-eyed jasmine that tumbled jubilantly over the edge, and

hung their scented wreaths far above his head. The tinkling of a

fountain could be heard within, and the mad rapture of song from

the birds in the evening, when the scent of the orange blossom

stole softly out on the radiant golden air. On the other side of

the garden was a grove of orange-trees. The rich, glossy, green

foliage rose in dark masses above the high wall, and some

inquisitive, encroaching boughs stretched over and occasionally

dropped their golden fruit into Ahmed's garden. On the inside of

the old, moss-grown wall were numerous buttresses, and in these

angles and corners, sheltered from any breeze, the roses and the

small fruit-trees fairly rioted together, blending their masses of

pink and white bloom.

On this evening, when the sky shone like one sheet of purest

mother-of-pearl, green and rose and faint purple, the garden was

very still; the only sound was the murmur of the falling water, the

coo of some white doves in a pear-tree, and a very light step

pacing on the tiny narrow path that wound its way round the whole

garden amongst the rose-bushes and lemon-trees.

Dilama, the youngest of the ladies of the harem, was walking in the

garden with her white veil thrown back and a smile on her small,

red, curling lips. She stooped here and there to gather a flower

whenever a bud or blossom of particular beauty caught her eye, and

fastened now one against her thick brown hair, and now one or two

upon the rich-embroidered muslin that covered the upper part of her

bosom. She was intensely happy: in the spring at Damascus, at

seventeen and in love, who would not be happy? The fires of youth

and love and joy burned in her flesh and danced in her veins and

shone in her eyes, and she sang and smiled to herself as she

gathered the flowers. She was a Druze woman, and gifted with the

wonderful beauty that Nature has showered on the women of Syria.

Skins that the most perfect Saxon skin of milk and rose can

scarcely rival are wedded to eyes of Eastern midnight and brown

tresses filled with shining lights of red and gold. She had been

born in the fierce, barren mountains lying behind Beirut, and at

eight years old had drifted--part of the spoils of a raid--into the

keeping of Ahmed Ali, the richest landowner and merchant of

Damascus. He was a Turk, of pure Turkish blood, and with the large,

generous heart and the kindly nature of the Turk. All the life that

owed him allegiance, that was supported by his hand, was happy and

well cared for--from the magnificent black horses, ignorant of whip

and spur, that filled his stables, and the dogs that lay peacefully

about in his palace, to the beauties of the harem, who tripped

about gaily singing and laughing in their cool halls and shaded

garden. Where the Turk rules there is usually peace, for his nature

is pacific, and in the palace of Ahmed there was joy and peace and

love and pleasure in abundance. There were seven ladies of the

harem, including Dilama, and six of these were happy wives of

Ahmed. Each had one or more sons, handsome, large-eyed, sedate

little Mohammedans, who were being trained by Turkish mothers in

all sorts of gentle ways and manners--in thought and care for

others, in courtesy and kindness; and who were very different in

their childish work and play from the brawling, selfish, cruel

little monsters that European children of the same age mostly are.

But Dilama was not yet Ahmed's wife; she loved him most truly and

deeply as an affectionate daughter. For who could not love Ahmed?

There was a charm in his stately beauty of face and figure, in the

kind musical voice, in the eyes so large and dark and gentle, that

was irresistible. But to Dilama he was something far above her: her

king, her lord indeed, for whom she would lay down life itself

without question, but not the man to whom her ardent simple nature

had turned for love. Ahmed had not sought her. When first she came

to his palace she had been too young except for him to treat as

a pretty child, and the relationship of father and daughter

then established had never yet been broken in upon. And the

light-hearted, sunny-natured Druze girl had taken life just as she

found it, regarding herself as Ahmed's daughter, and rejoicing in

her home of love and beauty she ceased to remember that one day he

would inevitably claim her as his wife, and that that day must be

the beginning or the end of happiness just as she prepared for it.

But she did not prepare for it, she ignored it: flitting like some

golden butterfly through the pleasant hours, and growing fairer

every day, so that the harem women looked at her with a little

sinking of the heart yet no ill-will, and said amongst themselves,

"Surely Ahmed must choose her soon." But Ahmed loved at that time

with his whole soul a Turkish woman, and she was to give him

shortly a second child, and for fear of disturbing her peace of

mind Ahmed remained in the Selamlik, and would not visit his other

wives, nor send for Dilama, though his eyes, like the others, noted

her growing beauty day by day.

"I will wait in patience," he thought, looking out one morning at

sunrise, and watching Dilama playing with the white doves on the

basin edge of the fountain. "I will wait till Buldoula is well and

strong again. She would fret now, and think I was forgetting her in

a new love if I call Dilama to me yet. I will wait till her second

son is born, and then in her joy and pride she will not be jealous

of the new wife."

So he waited, but in the game of love he that waits is ever the

loser. That night, when the moon was rising over the white and deep

green of Damascus, Dilama walked, humming to herself, in the

garden, full of a great leaping desire, born of her youth and fine

health and the breath of the May night, to love and be loved.

Suddenly, when she came to the corner, under the drooping boughs of

the grove without the garden, an orange fell, and, just escaping

her head struck her heavily on her bosom. With a great shock she

stood still, looking up, and there, on the summit of the high wall,

amid the green boughs, was a man sitting, leaning over down towards

her, with fiery eyes looking upon her from under a dark green

turban.

"It is death to be here," she whispered, her face pallid in the

moonlight, "do not stay;" yet her whole being leapt up with hope

that he would disobey. The man laughed softly.

"It is life to look on you," he said merely, and to her terrified

joy and horrified delight he slid down between the lemon-trees and

the wall, and stood before her in the angle it made, where two

buttresses jutting forward hid him from all view unless one stood

directly opposite.

Dilama shook from head to foot; in one fierce, sweeping rush,

love passed over and through her as she stood staring with wild

dilated eyes on the form before her. Tall, tall as Ahmed, with

all the grace and strength of youth, lithe and supple, with a

straight-lined, dark-browed face above a stately throat, and dark

kindling eyes, wells of living fire that called all her soul and

heart and womanhood into life.

"I have often watched you walking in the garden," he murmured,

gently taking in his, one nerveless hand. "I come from your village

in the hills, where you were taken from long ago. I am a Druze,"

and he threw his head higher, as the stag of the forest throws his

at the first note of the challenge. Dilama knew well that he was

of her own people. Infant memories, instinctive, implanted

consciousness told her this without the aid of Druze clothing, or

the short, gay dagger thrust into his waist-sash.

"I think you are not yet the wife of Ahmed Ali?" he went on, as

she simply trembled in silence, wave after wave of emotion passing

through her, striking her heart and choking her voice. "Tell me?"

Dilama shook her head, and a triumphant smile curved the handsome

lips before her.

"I knew it; you are mine," he said, in reply, and, bending over her

as she stood shrinking, on the verge of fainting, between terror

and wonder and joy, he kissed her on the lips, not roughly--even

gently--but with such a fire of life on his that it seemed to the

girl, in the destruction of all her usual feelings, in the havoc of

the new ones called in their place, that the actual moment of

dissolution had come.

That had been some three weeks ago, and now, on this soft, pearly

evening, she was waiting eagerly for the sky to deepen, and the

light of the stars to sharpen, and the orange to fall over the

wall. For the Druze had come many times, and no one had discovered

the lovers, screened by masses of roses in the buttress-sheltered

corner of the wall. In fact, for the last weeks no one had had time

or thought for anything but Buldoula, who lay sick within the

palace walls, and attendants waited anxiously or ran hither and

thither on various errands, and Ahmed was in the depths of anxiety;

and no one thought about Dilama or paid any attention to her, and

she was radiantly happy and self-engrossed, and came and went

between the garden and her own little chamber as she listed,

undisturbed. And this evening, as usual, she slipped unobserved

amongst the roses into the corner of the buttressed wall. A moment

after the boughs overhead parted, and the lithe Druze dropped down

noiselessly beside her. She put her gold braceleted arms round his

strong brown neck, and pressed her silken-covered bosom hard

against his rough cotton tunic. A great rush of rosy light flooded

all the sky for some minutes, then began to pale softly before the

approach of the lustrous purple dark.

In the palace a light behind one of the mushrabeared windows was

extinguished; there was the sound of the scurry of feet, and then a

long wail came out from the building, rending the pink-hued

twilight.

"Buldoula is dead!" remarked Dilama simply, as the lovers crouched

together between the wall and the roses. It meant nothing to her,

enclosed in the happy warmth of her lover's arms; death had no

meaning for her yet, hardly seventeen years' journey distant from

birth, and full of all the sap and great leaping fires of life.

Death was something so far away, so impossible to realise. It was

but a word to her--a casket enclosing nothing. Yet the death of

Buldoula was the embryo event in the womb of time from which was to

develop the whole tragedy of her own life.

"Buldoula is dead," she said again, carelessly, her rose-tipped

fingers smoothing the black sweeping arch of the man's brows.

"Perhaps her son is dead also. Ahmed will be very grieved--she was

going to bear her second son."

"Little dove! I must take you away to the mountains soon," said the

Druze, clasping her tighter to him. "Soon," he muttered again,

stooping down to look under the rose-boughs to the white-faced

house, now, with all its screened windows, dark. His words seemed

irrelevant, yet they were not. He had a keen prescience that the

death of the favourite of the harem might influence very quickly

Dilama's fate.

"Why not take me now, Murad? I want to see the mountains," and she

laid her little head, crowned by its masses of brown-gold hair, on

his warm breast.

"The caravan does not start for two weeks more," he answered

thoughtfully. "We must wait for it. It would be madness to try to

escape alone. We should be seen, noted, and tracked down. Think how

Ahmed will look for his treasure when he finds it stolen! But if

you are hidden in a bale of goods on a camel in the caravan, who

will suspect, who will know that the Druze has taken you? The whole

caravan of Druzes cannot be stopped because Ahmed has lost a wife!

No, in the caravan, with all the rest, we are safe. There is no

other way."

There was silence while the twilight deepened in the garden, and

the stars began to show above like flashing swords in the sky. In

the languor of love that knows no fear and has no cares, that

opiate of the soul, Dilama lay in his arms and sought his lips and

eyes, and asked no more about caravans and journeys and mountains,

drugged and heavy with love. In an hour when all was velvet

blackness beneath the wall, they kissed farewell. He scaled the

crumbling bricks, and regained the sheltering orange grove, and she

walked slowly back, drawing smooth her filmy veil, towards the

darkened palace.

Five days later at noontime, as Dilama was sitting in the garden

playing with the tame white doves by the fountain, one of the black

female slaves approached her. Dilama looked up questioningly,

holding a dove to her bosom.

"The lord is sorrowing within for his dead wife and dead son. He

has sent for you; go in, and lead him away from grief," and the

woman smiled and prostrated herself before Dilama, who shrank

instinctively away like a frightened child. But there is only one

law and one will in the harem, and she rose obediently, letting the

dove go, and stood ready to follow the slave. That meaning smile on

the woman's face filled her with an intuitive, instinctive,

undefined fear, and at the same instant there rushed over her the

realisation of the great happiness that same smile would have

brought her had there been no Murad, had she fled from that

rose-filled corner on that first evening--had she, in a word,

_waited_! This summons to the presence of their lord is what so

many of the harem slaves pine and long for through weary months,

and sometimes years. It came now to her, and it meant nothing but

vague fear and dread. She followed the slave with unelastic steps,

and her brain full of heavy thoughts; they passed the women's

apartments and went on to the Selamlik and to the room of Ahmed,

that looked out with unscreened windows into the cool, deep green

of the garden. The slave drew back at the door, holding a curtain

aside for the girl to enter. She went forward, the curtain fell

behind her, and she was alone with Ahmed.

He was sitting opposite on a low divan or couch, clothed from head

to foot in a deep blue robe, and with a turban of the same colour

twisted above his level brows--a kingly, majestic figure, and the

girl's heart beat and her eyelids fell as she crept slowly over the

floor towards him. At his feet she sank to her knees, and would

have put her forehead to the ground, but Ahmed bent forward, and

clasping both her arms lifted her on to the couch beside him.

"And you are the Druze child, Dilama?" he said gently, and leaning

a little back from her, surveyed her intently with dark lustrous

eyes. The girl felt swooning with terror; before his gaze her very

flesh seemed dissolving. It seemed as if her heart, her brain, with

the image of Murad stamped on them, would be laid bare to those

brilliant, searching eyes. What would he not know, suspect, find

out? What would he ask? demand of her? She could not ask herself.

Was this to be the end of his paternal relationship to her? the

beginning of a new one? She dared not lift her eyes lest he should

see their terror; the blood burnt in the surface of all her fair

skin, as if red-hot irons were pressed to it. And Ahmed, gazing

upon her with the pure noonday light, softened by the leafy screen

without pouring over her, drank in her fair Syrian beauty with

delight. The pale, rose-hued silken clothing she wore harmonised

with the ivory and rose of her round arms and throat and cheeks,

and threw up the masses of dark hair that fell beneath her veil to

her slender waist. Ahmed very gently unbound the snowy garment from

her head and stroked her hair lightly, watching the gold gleams in

its ripples as his hand passed over them. He saw her dismay,

confusion, even her terror, and noticed the quiver of her hands and

the irregular leap of her bosom, but these did not dismay him. He

was accustomed to be beloved even as he loved, and the women of the

harem who came to him in fear left him with happy confidence. He

affected now not to see her embarrassment, thinking it to be only

that, and said quietly, "And you have been happy, Dilama, in my

house?" The girl felt she must speak, though her throat seemed

closed and her tongue nerveless.

"Very happy," she faltered at last in a whisper.

"But you have been lonely, perhaps?" he asked. "Have the roses and

doves in the garden been companions enough for you? Have you not

been too much alone?"

In the heavy load of apprehension of intangible fear and horror

that seemed stifling her, a madness of longing came over the girl

to be free from her guilty secret, to have never known Murad. Now

she could have looked up fearless, full of expectant joy! She could

have loved this man; she knew it, now that she felt his love

approaching her: hope was dying within her that ever again would he

regard her simply as his daughter. She knew those tones of the

voice, she had heard them from Murad in the garden, but here the

voice was infinitely more refined, the sound of it exquisitely

musical; and now, that love for her was in it, it told her a new

secret, that she could have given love for love. She knew, though

her eyelids were down, how beautiful the face was that bent over

her: the straight, severe lines of it, the magnificent eyes and

brows burnt through her lids. Ah, why had he waited so long, or she

not waited longer?

Full of intolerable, irrepressible pain, she looked up at last

suddenly.

"Why did not my lord come into the garden, to the roses and doves

and--me?" she asked falteringly, her gaze held now irresistibly by

the dark orbs above her. Then, afraid of her own temerity, she

became white as death under his gaze.

But Ahmed was rather pleased by this first connected speech she

had made in the interview. It sounded to him like the tender

reproach of an amorous, expectant maiden, waiting eagerly for her

love, too long delayed. The under-meaning, the terrible regret for

irrevocable ill, naturally escaped him. He smiled, and put his arm

round her shoulders. "Well, it is not too late," he said, bending

over her. But the girl shrank from his arm, and he realised it

instantly. He was aware directly that there was some feeling in her

not quite fathomed nor understood. It puzzled him. He was far too

deep a thinker, far too refined a nature to treat his women as

inanimate toys to be used for his amusement, either with or without

their consent, as the chance might be. He knew them to be, and

treated them as, individual souls, with right of will and desire

equal to his own, and was too proud to accept the gift of the body

unless he had first conquered the will. But usually there was no

difficulty. Nature had gifted Ahmed with all the best treasures in

her jewel-box; beauty of face and form, strength and grace, charm

of voice and presence--everything needed to ensnare and delight

the senses, and he was accustomed to be loved, passionately adored,

and worshipped. He was naturally a connoisseur in such matters, and

knew well and easily the truth or dissembling in them. But here

there was neither: the girl shrank from him instinctively, and

seemed possessed by nothing but dumb, helpless fear that was

distressing to him. Yet not all distressing, for even in the best

of male natures there always remains some of the instinctive desire

of conquest, the delight in opposition, if not too prolonged, the

love of battle, the hope of victory; and to Ahmed, the invariably

successful lover, the resistance of this slight, rose-leaf creature

he could crush with one blow of his hand roused suddenly all the

primitive joy of the chase, the excitement of pursuit. Only, where

with some natures it would have been brutal and rapid, the end and

triumph assured, the prize the body; here it would be gentle and

dexterous, the end dependent on another, the prize the soul--the

soul, the will, the most difficult quarry to capture, as Ahmed

knew.

He let his arm slip from her shoulders, and rose and walked over

to the window, looking out for a moment into the delicious green

beyond. Dilama half-sat, half-crouched upon the divan, not daring

to stir, and watched him furtively.

Ahmed stood for a moment, and there was dead silence in the room.

Then he returned and came towards the couch, standing opposite it,

and looking down at her.

"Dilama, you seem very much afraid of me, and why is it? Look up

and speak to me. There is no need for fear. Do you think I have

called you here to force you to love me? There is no way of forcing

love. You are free to come and go to and from this room as you

will, but I am lonely and grieved, now Buldoula has been taken away

from me. I would like you to come here and play and sing to me, and

console me; will you?"

Dilama ventured to lift her eyes to the kingly figure before her,

and meeting the pained, dark eyes bent on her, and realising that

there was nothing, indeed, to make her fear but her own guilty

conscience, she burst suddenly into an uncontrollable passion of

weeping, and slipping from the couch fell sobbing at his feet.

Ahmed stooped and gathered her up in his arms, holding her to his

breast, and this time she did not shrink from him, but lay there

unresisting, crying violently. For a moment the clasp of his arm,

the touch of gentle sympathy, soothed and comforted her. For one

wild moment she longed to confide in him, to tell him the reality.

What would happen? Was it possible that Ahmed would pardon her, and

let her go to her own life, her own love and lover! No, it was not

possible--any other offence but this; theft or murder he could have

forgiven and sheltered, but this, no! Instinctively she knew and

felt it would not be possible to him--a Turk, free from prejudice

and superstition, liberal as he was--to forgive her crime. Death

for herself and Murad was the best she could expect. Ahmed's own

honour, the traditions of all his house, his great position would

make it impossible for him to let her pass from his, a Turk's harem

to a Druze lover. The thought whirled from her sick brain, leaving

all confused and hopeless as before, and her tears rained fast.

Ahmed smoothed her soft hair and kissed her forehead gently, as it

lay against his breast.

"Go and fetch your music, and sing to me," he whispered, as her

sobs ceased. "See how lovely the spring time is; it is no time for

tears, but for songs and--love." He murmured the last word very

softly and set her free. Without looking at him she slipped away to

the door in obedience to his command, and in a wild confusion of

feeling in which pleasure struggled with fear.

When she came back with her instrument, a small pear shaped guitar

in appearance, she was more composed. Her eyes were still red and

swollen, but the soft, elastic skin had already regained its

colouring. As she entered, soft bars of sunlight were falling

through the room, the window had been opened, and the song of the

birds came gaily through it. Ahmed had ordered coffee and

sweetmeats to be brought, and these now stood on a small inlaid

table before her, on whose glistening arabesques of mother of pearl

the sunbeams twinkled merrily. Ahmed's eyes lighted up with tender

pleasure as he saw her enter, and she noted it. He was still

sitting on the couch, and held in his hand a small green leather

case--the counterpart of hundreds to be seen in the jewellers'

windows in Paris. Dilama guessed at once it was some present for

her. Unconsciously the light, gay, butterfly nature of the girl

began to reassert itself in the knowledge that the final issue had

not to be met then; that there was respite for her, delay; and a

natural joy stirred in her looking across at Ahmed. It was

something, after all, to be queen of the harem, to be wooed in

gifts and smiles by its lord.

"Come here!" he said to her, and as she approached he opened the

case and took from it a bracelet, a limp band of gold with a clasp

of rubies and diamonds that flashed a thousand sparkling rays into

the astonished eyes of the girl, accustomed only to the dull, uncut

or poorly-cut gems of the East.

"How wonderful! Is it for me, really?" she exclaimed, as Ahmed took

her unresisting arm and clasped the bracelet round it above the

elbow, where it lent a new beauty to the flesh.

"Now, take some coffee, and then you shall play to me while I rest

and smoke," continued Ahmed, kissing her tenderly between the eyes,

as she gazed up gratefully to him, and though she flushed and

trembled, this time she did not shrink from him.

The coffee seemed more delicious than any that was served in the

haremlik, and the gold-tipped cigarettes and the jam, made out of

rose leaves, that Ahmed pressed upon her, delighted her senses and

helped to make her think less of the passing hour and Murad, who

would be waiting in stormy passion for her, in the angle of the

wall. "I can't help it; I can't help it!" she thought to herself as

she took up her instrument and bent over the strings to tune them,

while Ahmed stretched himself at full length on the divan to

listen, with a scarlet cushion supporting his regal head. She could

both sing and play well, for Ahmed loved music, and wisely

considered it a safe amusement--an outlet for superfluous passions

and unexpressed feelings--for the women of the harem. Instruments

were provided in plenty, and instruction and all encouragement

given to them to learn, and from her first day in the harem

Dilama's natural voice and talents had been noted and fostered.

This afternoon, at first she was timid, and sang and played

stiffly, carefully, with a great attention to notes and strings;

but slowly the calm and stillness of the beautiful sun-filled room,

the scented air floating in from the garden, the tense atmosphere

of passion about her, and the magic beauty of the face and form

opposite influenced her, grew upon her, wrapped her round, and she

began to sing passionately, ardently, with that abandonment,

without which all music is a hollow sound. Her glorious voice,

fresh, youthful, clear, and pure came rushing joyously over her

lips and filled the room. Her spirits rose as she realised the

power she was exerting. She felt a little impatient at the thought

of Murad. After all, she was a great lady, a lady of the harem of

Ahmed Ali, the richest Turk in Damascus. She was dressed in

delicate silks, and the jewels blazed on her arm. She was queen of

the harem, and the beloved of its lord. He was most desirable to

her and to all women, and, but for Murad, who seemed to stand like

a black shadow between, she would have lain upon his breast with

pure delight. She leant forward now, singing rapturously over the

instrument pressed close to her soft breast, while her rose-hued

fingers leapt among its strings; a transparent flush, delicate as

the tint of a shell, glowed in her cheeks; her large, dark eyes

looked straight at Ahmed, drawing in all the proud beauty of his

face; her hair lay soft and thick without its veil above her brows,

and one heavy tress fell forward over her shoulder to her knee.

Ahmed lay watching her, his eyes filled with sombre fires, his

whole soul listening to the song; and one other lay listening also,

and this was Murad, crouching in the shade of the orange-tree

plantation, catching with distended ears that flood of passionate

melody wafted to him over the still garden, from the window of

Ahmed's apartment, from the Selamlik.

When the song was finished, and the last notes had faltered softly

into silence, Ahmed rose from his divan and crossed to where she

sat. The room was full now of hot rosy light; the scent of the

orange flowers poured in through the windows; the girl's senses

grew confused and dizzy. Her cheeks were flaming with the

excitement and joy and effort and passion of her singing; her

eyelids were cast down, and beneath them her eyes watched, half in

terror, half in a strained delight, the blue Persian slippers

advancing silently over the matting on the floor towards her.

"Will Dilama stay with me to-night?"

The girl looked up, whitening to the lips, and slid to a kneeling

position. Terror at the thought of infidelity to Murad filled her;

he would infallibly find it out and avenge himself. Her face worked

convulsively; she stretched out her hands with a gesture of

despair.

"What my lord wills: I am the slave of his wishes."

Ahmed drew his level brows together, and for a moment lined the

serene beauty of his forehead. He gazed at her with a steady,

puzzled look, and at last a faint, half-quizzical smile relaxed his

lips. What could this strange idea, this whim be, so unlike all

Eastern maiden's usual fancies? He had not yet solved the riddle,

nor found the clue! he would do so, but in the meantime she must be

left her freedom. In all noble natures power brings with it a

terrible responsibility, and the habit of stern self-control and

long forbearance. Ahmed's complete power over the frightened piece

of humanity before him brought upon him the necessity practically

of surrender; for the Turk possesses one of the noblest and gentle

natures the human race can boast of. Ahmed remained silent for a

few seconds, and the girl gazed upon him with dilated, fascinated

eyes. She noted in a dazed way how the dark blue robe parted on his

breast and showed beneath a vest of gold silk, fastened a little to

the side by a single emerald; how the column of throat towered

above these, supporting the oval face and beautifully-modelled

chin, and above these again, and the commanding brows, shone

another solitary emerald between the folds of his turban on his

forehead.

Murad began to seem like a robber depriving her of all these

things. There is no fidelity in the body. Fidelity is a thing of

the mind, always at war with and striving to coerce those instincts

of the senses that are ever clamouring after the new and the

unknown. Nature is ever driving us on to seek new mates. The mind

with its trammels of affection, gratitude, pity, consideration, is

ever dragging us back and seeking to tie us to the old. Nature's

rule is fresh seasons, fresh mates, new hours, new loves. And he

who seeks fidelity must woo the mind, for the body cannot give it,

and knows not its laws.

After a minute's silence Ahmed stretched out his hand to her and

raised her to her feet. His face had lost its smiles and fire; it

was grave and sombre-looking now, but his voice was gentle as he

answered her:

"You are free to return to the haremlik," he said; "no one has any

power to coerce you. I wish you to come and go as you will." He

waved his hand towards the curtain with a gesture of dismissal, and

then turned away and rang a little silver bell on a table. The

black slave appeared--it seemed almost instantly--before the

curtain; while Dilama still stood, motionless, irresolute, with a

curious sense of disappointment, mingling with relief, stealing

over her. Ahmed beckoned the slave to him, and said something

in a low voice Dilama did not catch, but the last sentence she

overheard. "Send Soutouma to me," and without taking any further

notice of Dilama, Ahmed turned back towards the divan, threw

himself upon it, and drew the pipe-stand towards him.

The black slave, with a smile on her curving lips, motioned to

Dilama to precede her, and Dilama, with one look flung backward to

Ahmed's couch in the full sunlight of the window, passed under the

heavy blue curtain out into the passage. "Send Soutouma to me!" the

words went through her with a cutting feeling, as a knife dividing

her flesh.

Soutouma was next to Buldoula in age and rank--a fair beauty of the

harem, with soft, long, sunlit tresses, and a skin of snow.

"Yes, why not? why not?" asked Dilama wildly to herself as her feet

dragged along down the passage side by side with the grinning

black's. "I am a Druze girl: I belong to Murad and to the

mountains." But the insidious charm of Ahmed's personality worked

on all the pulses of her body; pulses that know not fidelity,

though her brain kept telling her that Murad would be waiting for

her in the garden. But that night Murad did not come. The garden

stood cool and fragrant, full of perfume and rosy light, full of

the music of birds and the tints of a thousand flowers--all the

invitations to love, but love itself was absent. Dilama searched

the garden from end to end, and walked in and out among the roses

by the buttressed wall, but the garden was empty and silent. She

was alone. Tired at last, and ready to cry with fatigue and

disappointment, she sat down by the red brick wall, leaning her

chin on her hand and gazing up towards the windows of the Selamlik,

which could only be seen in portions here and there through a leafy

screen of plane-tree branches. How still it was in the garden, and

how the scent of the orange flower weighed on the senses! How clear

the pink, transparent air!

Through that same lucid air, under the spreading plane-trees, and

through the great dim bazaars of the city, walked Murad that

evening with quick, hot feet, and the liquid coursing in his veins

seemed fire instead of blood. He went from Druze to Druze, wherever

he could find them, in their own homes, or sitting at a shady

corner of a street, where the tiny rush-bottomed stools are

gathered round the tea-stalls with their hissing brazen urns and

porcelain cups, or lounging in the bazaars, or at the marble

drinking-fountains. Wherever they were he found them, and spoke a

few hot, eager words to them, urging them to hurry forward their

preparations, and be ready to start with the caravan at the rising

of the full moon. Then, as the rosy light changed into violet dusk,

he went home to his low, yellow, square-roofed dwelling on the edge

of the desert, and sat there in his one unlighted room--sat there

gazing out with unseeing eyes into the lustrous Damascus night

beyond the open door, and with the fingers of his right hand

playing absently with the handle of his knife.

A week had passed over and Ahmed had not sent again for Dilama, nor

had Murad visited the garden, and to the Eastern girl it seemed as

if the world had stopped still. The hot, languid days, the gorgeous

nights with the blaze of the stars and the rapture of the

nightingales, filled her with madness that seemed insupportable.

She knew of no reason for Murad's desertion. She could find out

nothing. She did not dare to breathe a word to any one of the

anxiety, the wonder, the desperation that seemed choking her. What

had become of him? What had happened? Would he ever come again? And

as he appealed only to her senses, and he was not there, she ceased

to wish for him very much, but thought more of Ahmed and the

Selamlik that were close to her. For the mind and the imagination

love in absence and long after the absent one, but the senses are

stirred by proximity, and turn to the one who is nearest.

One evening, when the soft sky was a clear crimson and the full

moon rose a perfect disk of transparent silver, faint as yet in the

blood-red glow, Dilama felt as if she could exist no longer in the

still, even, unchanging peace of the women's apartments. The song

of the water without, the coo of the doves, the incessantly

repeated love-note of the mating sparrows, seemed to madden her

beyond endurance.

She lay face downwards on the soft carpet of her little

sleeping-chamber, and moaned unconsciously aloud, "Let me die! let

me die! I have lost favour with all men."

The black slave was sitting cross-legged just outside the curtain,

and when these slow, long drawn-out words came from the other side

a light gleamed in her shrewd, beady-black eyes. With one claw-like

hand she cautiously drew back a fold of the curtain, and peering in

saw the foremost lady of the harem lying prostrate, her face

pressed to the floor. She made no sound, but dropping the curtain

noiselessly, sidled slowly off down the dark passage leading to the

Selamlik. Ahmed was alone in his apartment when the slave appeared,

sitting on the broad window ledge gazing out from the window which

overlooked his grounds, and beyond them the white minarets and

shining cupolas of the city. He turned at the interruption, but his

face lighted up with pleasure as he recognised the women's

attendant, and he signed to her to approach.

"The Lady Dilama is weeping in her chamber, desiring my lord,"

announced the slave, with much bowing and prostration, but still

with that confidence which showed she knew how welcome the news

would be to her august listener. Ahmed rose, a fire of joy leaping

up suddenly within him.

"It is well," he said, in an even tone. "Let the Lady Dilama come

to me, and for yourself take this," and he dropped beside the

crouching heap of black back and shoulder a small velvet bag. The

slave grabbed it and put it in her breast, muttering a thousand

thanks and blessings, and withdrew.

Once outside, her lean black legs carried her swiftly back to

Dilama's room, where she pushed aside the curtain without ceremony.

"Come!" she said imperiously, "you are Ahmed Ali's chosen one; he

has sent for you. Put off that torn veil, and all that weeping. I

have new robes here for you."

Dilama, who had hurriedly gathered herself up at the slave's entry,

shrank away now into a corner of the room, white as death.

"Has he sent for me?" she asked breathlessly. "Commanded me? Oh,

must I go?"

The slave looked at her strangely. She had no suspicion of Dilama's

secret, and had no idea that her own misrepresentations were as

gross as they were. But she had no wish to be harsh or unkind to

this girl, who would be in a few hours queen of the harem. She was

puzzled. She drew near to Dilama's shrinking form, and peered into

her face.

"Yes, he _commands_," she said; "but is it possible you do not

wish to go to Ahmed? He is a king amongst men, and he loves you.

What better fate could there be than to lie on his breast, in his

arms? Is it not better than the ground to which you were crying

just now? Surely you will reward me well to-morrow?"

Dilama answered nothing. Long shivers were passing through her. It

was decided, then; she could no longer avoid her fate, and already

with that thought the Oriental calm of acceptance came to her.

Besides, where was Murad? She could not tell. Fate had taken him

from her, perhaps--the same Fate that gave her to Ahmed. She was

helpless. She had no choice but to obey. And the words of the

slave, accompanied by those piercing, meaning looks, inflamed her

senses. After that unbearable week of solitude the summons came to

her not all unwelcome, and the supreme thought of Ahmed himself

loomed up suddenly, bringing irresistible joy with it. A flame

passed over her cheeks; she caught the slave's skinny black hand

between her own rose-leaf palms.

"Yes, I will reward you," she murmured. "Dress me beautifully,

decorate me that I may find favour with Ahmed."

The slave laughed meaningly.

"Does the desert traveller burn and sigh after water, and then do

the springs of Damascus not find favour in his eyes?" she asked,

and laughed again as she approached Dilama, and began to undress

her. In a few minutes the whole of the haremlik was in a state of

pleasant excitement. The news of the dressing of the bride spread

into its furthest corners, and the women came to talk and jest, and

the servants fled hither and thither upon errands. Dilama was led

into the large general room, and there bathed from head to foot

with warm rose-water; while the others sat round and chatted

together, and admired her ivory skin, with the wild rose Syrian

bloom upon it, and her masses of gold-tinted chestnut hair. And the

black slave bathed and anointed and dressed her with the utmost

care and great self-importance, and sent the underslaves flying in

all directions, one to gather syringa, and other heavy-scented

blossoms from the garden, and another to fetch the jewels for her

neck; and as the attar of rose bottle was found to be empty, a

slave was sent with flying feet to the bazaar to purchase more; and

Dilama, excited and elated, surrounded by jest and laughter and

smiling faces, felt her youth leap up within her, and rejoice at

coming into its kingdom--love.

In the bazaar the slave sped to the perfume-seller, and, swelling

with the importance of his mission, stayed a moment to chatter with

the dealer.

"They are dressing a new bride for my master, and I must hasten

back," he gossiped, lounging on the merchant's little stall. "Ahmed

Ali awaits her in the Selamlik; I must be going. They say her

beauty is wonderful; she is not a Turk, but a Syrian from the

mountains by Beirut. I must hasten: they will be waiting."

"Yes, hasten on your way," returned the perfume-seller. He was a

Turk, dignified and gracious, and of no mind to listen to gossip

from the harem, of which it was little short of scandalous to speak

so publicly. He had other customers in his shop who could hear,

amongst them a black-browed Druze in a green turban, who was

waiting patiently his turn, and who seemed to listen intently to

this most improper gossip. The slave disappeared with flying feet

to catch up his wasted moments, but when the Turk turned to serve

the silent Druze, he, too, had vanished, and some white-turbaned

Arabs pressed forward in his place.

* * * * *

Dilama in her lighted chamber, with her fresh young eyes a little

painted beneath their lids, and heavy gold chains about her soft

young throat, sat looking into the little French mirror of cheap

glass and gilt, and waiting for the attar of rose to be poured on

her shining hair.

At last the boy returned breathless, and the precious stuff was

poured on her hair and hands. Then she stood up radiant and the

women sighed and smiled by turns as she went out, preceded by the

old slave. A long narrow passage, lighted overhead by swinging

coloured lamps, divided the women's from the men's apartments, and

through this they passed noiselessly over the matting-covered

floor. At the end fell heavy curtains, concealing the door and some

steps. Here the slave left the girl, and Dilama went through the

curtains alone. She mounted the steps and passed through the door.

All was quite silent here, and the passage unlighted, except that

through a tiny window high up above her head a streak of moonlight

fell across her way. Dilama paused oppressed, she knew not by what

feeling. Only a short passage and another curtained door divided

her now from Ahmed's presence. Her breath came fast, her pulses

beat nervously, and her feet dragged; slowly and unwillingly she

crept onward, harassed by cold, vague fears. Before the door itself

she trembled, and her soft hands and wrists hardly availed to push

it open. It yielded slowly, and fell to behind her in silence.

The room was full of light; a silver blaze of moonlight illumined

it from end to end. The great windows, over which usually the

curtains were drawn, stood uncovered and wide open to the soft

Damascus air. The scent of roses and jessamine from the great man's

garden stole in with the silver light. The girl paused when just

over the threshold: she was cold and frightened, and her body

shook. Ahmed did not move or speak. He was sitting sideways to one

great window, with his head resting against the high back of the

one European chair that the room possessed. The light was so strong

that the rich, deep blue of the turban was distinctly visible in

it, but his face was in shadow. She could see, however, the noble

throat and pose of the shoulders as he sat waiting. The girl's

heart beat with a little sense of pleasure as she looked. Her feet

crept slowly a little farther into the room. A great tide of

pleasure was really just outside her heart, and would have rushed

in and overwhelmed it in waves of joy had she but opened her

heart's doors to it; but the shadow of Murad was on the bolts and

locks, and she felt afraid. The silence and great silver light in

the room oppressed her. Ahmed had not heard her enter, and had not

stirred nor looked at her. She crept a little closer. The beauty of

the majestic figure called her irresistibly. She drew closer. She

had passed one window now, and was near enough to see the jewels

flash on the slender hand that hung over the chair-arm, and the

glistening light on the embroidered Turkish slippers on his feet.

Shading her brow with one hand, Dilama came forward, fell at those

feet and kissed them. Still there was no movement, no sound. This

was so unlike Ahmed's way of treating his slaves, that the girl,

forgetting her fears, looked up in sheer surprise. Then her heart

seemed to stop suddenly, and then leap with excessive thuds of

horror against her breast. The face above her seemed carved in

stone, pale, bloodless, calm; it was set, as the girl realised in a

moment of terror and agony, in a repose that would never be broken.

The large, dark eyes, still open, gazed past her, sightless,

changeless. Fear, her fear of him, her awe, her oppressed terror

fell from her, giving way to an infinite regret, a sorrow, a sense

of loss that rushed over her, filling every cell, every atom of her

being. She, the unwilling, the reluctant, the slow-coming, the

grudging bride, now stood free. The bridegroom asked of her

nothing, demanded nothing, needed nothing, desired nothing.

The slave-girl neither shrieked nor fainted. A great, convulsive

sob tore itself from her trembling body as she rose from her knees

and bent over the sitting figure. Wildly she passed her soft,

shaking fingers across his brow, still warm, and round his throat,

seeking mechanically the wound; then her eyes fell on the gold silk

of his tunic, and just over the left breast she saw a little brown

patch, and on the left side of the chair the silver light gleamed

on a small, dark-red pool. He had been stabbed as he sat there,

waiting for her--stabbed from the back, and the dagger thrust

through to the little brown spot in the front of the tunic. And

through that tiny door his life had gone.

Lying at his feet, Dilama sobbed uncontrollably, rolling her head,

with its wonderful crown of flower-decked hair, and her pink-silk

clad body amongst the rugs on the floor. What was the worth or use

of anything now, silk or bridal attire, or beauty, or flower-decked

hair? Never would any of them now be mirrored in his eyes again.

Never could anything change that awful serenity, that implacable

silence, out of which she felt her own love, her own desire rush

upon her and devour her. Ahmed had been hers and she had shrunk

from him, and now all the blood in her body she would have given

willingly to replace that little scarlet stream that had borne away

his life.

As she lay there, weeping in an agony of despair, a dark shadow

suddenly grew in the window, and fell a black patch in the panel of

white light upon the floor. A lithe figure balanced a moment on the

ledge of the open window, then leapt with the silent elastic bound

of a cat into the room. Dilama sprang from the floor to her knees

with a smothered cry of terror.

"Murad! why have you come here?"

The Druze leant over her and caught her arm fiercely.

"To claim my own. It is not the first visit I have made to-night,

as you see," and as he dragged her up from her knees he indicated

the motionless figure beside them.

"You killed him!" she whispered, gazing up with dilated, terrified

eyes.

"Who should, if not I? Had he not taken my wife? Come, we must be

going."

With the nail-like grip on her arm, and the low, savage tones in

her ears, and the blazing eyes like a tiger's, inflamed with the

lust of murder above her, the girl felt sick and half-fainting with

fear and misery.

"He did not take me. I was always faithful, Murad. I love you.

I--" she stammered.

"It is well," returned Murad with a grim smile, "and these tears I

suppose are because I was too long absent? It is true I have been

some time: I had much to do, and then I knew I was quite safe, now

I had settled all accounts with him. Come! the caravan is ready;

the camels wait for you."

He dragged her towards the open square, the great square of the

window. Without, the night-flies and the moths danced in the silver

beams, the trees rose motionless and stately in the sultry air, the

gracious hours moved on with all the tranquil splendour of the

Oriental night. The girl threw her eyes over the sitting figure,

unmoved by all the strenuous passions fighting round it. Wildly, in

despairing agony, she stretched out her arms towards it in a vain,

unconscious passionate appeal.

The Druze struck them downwards, and gripping her unresisting body

more tightly, he leapt from the window to the slight wooden

staircase without, and, like a tiger with his prey, crept away

stealthily through the silver silence of the rose garden towards

the desert.