Sanda was struck with horror, but Ourïeda could not at first even understand why she was shocked. "If a viper were ready to strike you or one you loved, would you think harm of killing it?" she asked. "Tahar is venomous as a viper. I should give thanks to Allah if he were dead, no matter how he died. But since Allah does not will his death, I must pray for courage to die myself rather than be false to Manöel, who has perhaps himself gone to Paradise, since he does not answer when I call; and if a woman can have a soul, I may belong to him there."
Sanda had forgiven her, realizing if not understanding fully the difference between a heart of the East and a heart of the West, and loving the Arab girl with unabated love. Up to the hour when Ben Râana came into the garden of the harem and bade his daughter praise Allah because her wedding day was at hand, Sanda hoped, and begged Ourïeda to hope, that "something might happen." But even to her that seemed the end, for the girl listened with meekness and offered no objection except that the hot weather had stolen her strength: she was not well.
"Let the excitement of being a bride bring back thy health, like wine in thy veins, Little Rose," said the Agha, speaking in French out of compliment to the guest, and to show her that there was no family secret under discussion which she might not share.
"It is not exciting to marry my cousin Tahar," Ourïeda sighed rather than protested. "He is an ugly man, dreadful for a girl to look upon as her husband."
"Thou makest me feel that thine aunt is right when she tells me I was wrong ever to let thee look upon him or any man except thy father," the Agha answered quickly, with a sudden light behind the darkness of his eyes like the flash of a sword in the night. Sanda, knowing what she knew, guessed at a hidden meaning in the words. He was remembering Manöel, and wishing his daughter to see that he had never for a moment forgotten the thing that had passed. The Agha, despite his eagle face, had been invariably so gentle when with the women of his household, and had seemed so cultured, so instructed in all the tenets of the twentieth century, that Sanda had sometimes wondered if his daughter were not needlessly afraid of him. But the unsheathing of that sword of light convinced her of Ourïeda's wisdom. The girl knew her father. If she dared to urge any further her dislike of Tahar he would believe it was because of Manöel, and hurry rather than delay the wedding. Illness was the only possible plea, and even to that Ben Râana seemed to attach little importance. Marriage meant change and new interests. It should be a tonic for a Rose drooping in the garden of her father's harem.
"Thou seest for thyself that it is no use to plead," whispered Ourïeda when her father had gone, and Leila Mabrouka and her woman, Taous, on the overhanging balcony, were loudly discussing details of the feast. "Now, at last, is the time to tell the thing I waited to tell, till the worst should come: the thing thou couldst do for me, which would be even harder to do, and take more courage—oh! far more courage!—than leaving the letters open."
The look in Ourïeda's eyes of topaz brown was more tragic, more strangely fatal than Sanda had ever seen it yet, even on the roof in the sunset when the story of Manöel had been told. The heart of her friend felt like a clock that is running down. She was afraid to know the thing which Ourïeda wanted her to do; yet she must know—and make up her mind. It seemed as if there were nothing she could refuse, still——
"What is it you mean?" she whispered back, the two heads leaning together over a frame of bright embroidery in Ourïeda's lap, and the tinkle of the fountain drowning the soft voices, even if the chatter at the door of Leila Mabrouka's room above had not covered the secret words.
"When I said there was a thing I would ask, if the worst came," Ourïeda repeated, "I meant one of two things. If thou wilt do either, they are for thee to choose between. But thou wilt think them both terrible, and my only hope is that thou lovest me."
"You know I do," Sanda breathed.