"In the name of Lella M'Barka be thou welcome," she said. "My mistress has been suffering all day, and fears to rise, lest her strength fail for to-morrow's journey, or she would come forth to meet thee, O Flower of the West! As it is, she begs that thou wilt come to her. But first suffer me to remove thy haïck, that the eyes of Lella M'Barka may be refreshed by thy beauty."
She would have unfastened the long drapery, but Hsina put down Victoria's luggage, and pushing away the two brown hands, tattooed with blue mittens, she herself unfastened the veil. "No, this is my lady, and my work, Fafann," she objected.
"But it is my duty to take her in," replied the Bedouin woman, jealously. "It is the wish of Lella M'Barka. Go thou and make ready the room of the guest."
Hsina flounced away across the court, and Fafann held open both the door and the curtains. Victoria obeyed her gesture and went into the room beyond. It was long and narrow, with a ceiling of carved wood painted in colours which had once been violent, but were now faded. The walls were partly covered with hangings like the curtains that shaded the glass door; but, on one side, between gold-embroidered crimson draperies, were windows, and in the white stucco above, showed lace-like openings, patterned to represent peacocks, the tails jewelled with glass of different colours. On the opposite side opened doors of dark wood inlaid with mother-o'-pearl; and these stood ajar, revealing rows of shelves littered with little gilded bottles, or piled with beautiful brocades that were shot with gold in the pink light of an Arab lamp.
There was little furniture; only a few low, round tables, or maidas, completely overlaid with the snow of mother-o'-pearl; two or three tabourets of the same material, and, at one end of the room a low divan, where something white and orange-yellow and purple lay half buried in cushions.
Though the light was dim, Victoria could see as she went nearer a thin face the colour of pale amber, and a pair of immense dark eyes that glittered in deep hollows. A thin woman of more than middle age, with black hair, silver-streaked, moved slightly and held out an emaciated hand heavy with rings. Her head was tied round with a silk handkerchief or takrita of pansy purple; she wore seroual, full trousers of soft white silk, and under a gold-threaded orange-coloured jacket or rlila, a blouse of lilac gauze, covered with sequins and open at the neck. On the bony arm which she held out to Victoria hung many bracelets, golden serpents of Djebbel Amour, and pearls braided with gold wire and coral beads. Her great eyes, ringed with kohl, had a tortured look, and there were hollows under the high cheek-bones. If she had ever been handsome, all beauty of flesh had now been drained away by suffering; yet stricken as she was there remained an almost indefinable distinction, an air of supreme pride befitting a princess of the Sahara.
Her scorching fingers pressed Victoria's hand, as she gazed up at the girl's face with hungry curiosity and interest such as the Spirit of Death might feel in looking at the Spirit of Life.
"Thou art fresh and fair, O daughter, as a lily bud opening in the spray of a fountain, and radiant as sunrise shining on a desert lake," she said in a weary voice, slightly hoarse, yet with some flutelike notes. "My cousin spoke but truth of thee. Thou art worthy of a reward at the end of that long journey we shall take together, thou, and he, and I. I have never seen thy sister whom thou seekest, but I have friends, who knew her in other days. For her sake and thine own, kiss me on my cheeks, for with women of my race, it is the seal of friendship."
Victoria bent and touched the faded face under each of the great burning eyes. The perfume of ambre, loved in the East, came up to her nostrils, and the invalid's breath was aflame.
"Art thou strong enough for a journey, Lella M'Barka?" the girl asked.