"Zakia says I may tell thee our secret," she said. "At first she was afraid, but now she sees that she may trust thee as I do. Didst thou guess there was a secret?"
"Yes," answered Sanda.
"I thought so! Well, it is this: At the hammam is employed a cousin of Embarka's. I feared never to hear of Embarka again; but my father is more enlightened than I thought. He might have ordered her death, and the eunuchs would have obeyed, and no one would ever have known. Yet he did no more than send her away, giving her no time even to pack that which was hers. He did not care what became of her, being sure that she could never again enter our house. But he did not know of the cousin in the hammam. And perhaps he did not stop to think that I might have given Embarka jewels for helping me. She would have helped without payment, because she loved me. But I wished to reward her. She hid the things in her clothing; and when she was turned out she still thought of me, not of herself. She knew I would go to the hammam before my marriage, and that Zakia had been sent for to bathe me and make me beautiful. So she gave her cousin there a present, and all the rest of the jewels she gave to Zakia, for a promise Zakia made. Nothing has Embarka kept of all my gifts. It was like her! The rest is easy now. I shall never again know happiness, but neither shall I know the shame of giving myself to a man I hate when heart and soul belong to one I love."
"Can la hennena help you to escape?" Sanda wanted to know.
"From Tahar, yes. Here is the way," Ourïeda answered. And she held out for Sanda to see a tiny pearl-studded gold box, one of many quaint ornaments on a chain the girl always wore round her neck. She had explained the meaning or contents of each fetich long ago, and Sanda knew all about the sacred eye from Egypt, the white coral horn to ward off evil, the silver and emerald case with a text from the Koran blessed by a great saint or marabout, and the pearl-crusted gold box containing a lock of hair certified to be that of Fatma Zora, the Prophet's favourite daughter.
"I have put the hair with the text," said Ourïeda. "Look, in its place this tiny bottle of white powder. Canst thou guess what it is for?"
The blood rushed to Sanda's face, then back to her heart. But she did not answer. She only looked at Ourïeda: a wide-eyed, fascinated look.
"Thou hast guessed," the Agha's daughter said in a very little voice like a child's. "But I shall not use it if, when I have told him how I hate him, he consents to let me alone. If he is a fool, why, he brings his fate on himself. This is for his lips, if they try to touch mine."
"But," Sanda gasped; "you would be a——"
"I know the word in thy mind. It is 'murderess.' Yet my conscience would be clear. It would be for the sake of my love—to keep true to my promise at any cost. And the cost might be my life. They would find out; they would know how he died. This is no coward's act like smiling at a man and giving him each day powdered glass or chopped hair of a leopard in his food, which many of our women do, to kill and leave no trace. If I break, I pay."