"She looks like an angel," Saidee thought, and with a curious mingling of reluctance and eagerness, moved softly toward the bed, her little velvet slippers from Tunis making no sound on the thick rugs.
Very well the older woman remembered an engaging trick of the child's, a way of sleeping with her cheek in her hand, and her hair spread out like a golden coverlet for the pillow. Just so she was lying now; and in the moonlight her face was a child's face, the face of the dear, little, loving child of ten years ago. Like this Victoria had lain when her sister crept into their bedroom in the Paris flat, the night before the wedding, and Saidee had waked her by crying on her eyelids. Cassim's unhappy wife recalled the clean, sweet, warm smell of the child's hair when she had buried her face in it that last night together. It had smelled like grape-leaves in the hot sun.
"If you don't come back to me, I'll follow you all across the world," the little girl had said. Now, she had kept her promise. Here she was—and the sister to whom she had come, after a thousand sacrifices, was wishing her back again at the other end of the world, was planning to get rid of her.
Suddenly, it was as if the beating of Saidee's heart broke a tight band of ice which had compressed it. A fountain of tears sprang from her eyes. She fell on her knees beside the bed, crying bitterly.
"Childie, childie, comfort me, forgive me!" she sobbed.
Victoria woke instantly. She opened her eyes, and Saidee's wet face was close to hers. The girl said not a word, but wrapped her arms round her sister, drawing the bowed head on to her breast, and then she crooned lovingly over it, with little foolish mumblings, as she used to do in Paris when Mrs. Ray's unkindness had made Saidee cry.
"Can you forgive me?" the woman faltered, between sobs.
"Darling, as if there were anything to forgive!" The clasp of the girl's arms tightened. "Now we're truly together again. How I love you! How happy I am!"
"Don't—I don't deserve it," Saidee stammered. "Poor little Babe! I was cruel to you. And you'd come so far."
"You weren't cruel!" Victoria contradicted her, almost fiercely.