"Did your mother know who did the terrible deed?" asked the lad.
"She knew all; the dagger which I left behind, and my sudden flight, were sufficient evidence against me," replied Ali. "My mother cursed me in the presence of her servants! I can never, never meet her again; she is now childless indeed."
"And you can never return to Persia?"
"I do not think that I should incur personal risk by going," replied Ali, in a more indifferent tone; "these things are not looked upon in our land as they are in yours. My countrymen think little of blood being shed in a hasty quarrel, and I have that which would make my peace. But I should hate to return to Persia, bearing with me the weight of a brothers blood and a mother's curse."
Young Hartley felt sickened with horror. He could hardly endure to remain in the presence of one who had committed so terrible a crime. Robin was not sufficiently well read in Oriental history to know how fearfully common fratricide has been amongst Asiatics of the highest rank; nor did he make sufficient allowance for the lowering of the moral standard caused by following a religion that in some cases not only palliates murder, but raises it into a merit. Robin was more given to feel acutely than to calculate deeply. He had not acquired the callousness in regard to sin which often follows familiarity with its loathsome details, like the insensibility to vitiated air which comes from perpetually breathing it. The emotion in the breast of our young Knight of St. John after hearing Ali's story might be well expressed by one most forcible line from Shakespeare—
"Oh! I am sickened with this smell of sin!"
Ali saw the impression made by his words, he had noticed the slight shrinking back from his person, he felt that the only human being whom he had sought to make his friend was lost to him for ever. Tenfold bitterness returned to his spirit. With the haughty air of one who is offended, rather than conscious of having given offence, the Persian rose from his reclining position, and, standing erect, said to young Hartley, who had covered his eyes with his hand, "Enough—you have my secret; can I trust to your honour not to betray it?"
"I will never divulge it; but would that I had never heard it!" was Robin's reply.
The Amir strode out of the tent, heedless of the heat and the glare. His attendants, after taking their noonday repast of fruit, under what shelter the camels and piled luggage afforded, were indulging in a siesta. Ali was the only being awake.
"So it is gone, and never to return, that glimpse of brightness which beguiled me into idle hope!" muttered the Amir to himself. "The very boy who owes his life to me, whom I have watched over, nursed, almost loved, regards me with unconcealed loathing! Well, I will soon liberate him from the presence which he hates; I will keep my promise to take him to Djauf, and then we part, to see each other no more in this world—or the next!"