'This is the woman. Your father would have taken her for his wife. But Allah has disposed otherwise.'
'She is beautiful. She is worthy to be a king's wife,' said Zehowah.
'The Sultan?' asked Almasta, for she hardly understood. Her face turned as white as bone bleached by the sun, and her fingers trembled, while her eyes were cast down.
Zehowah looked at Khaled and laughed.
'See how she trembles and turns pale before you,' she said. 'And a little while ago her face was red. You have found a torch wherewith to kindle this lamp, and a breath that can extinguish it.'
'I do not know,' Khaled answered. But he looked attentively at Almasta and remained silent for some time. 'It is now necessary to divide the spoils of the war,' he said at last, 'and to bestow such of these women as you do not wish to keep upon the most deserving of the officers.'
'My lord will surely take the fairest for himself, since she loves him,' said Zehowah, again laughing, but somewhat bitterly.
'May my tongue be cloven and my eyes be put out, may my hands wither at the wrists and my feet fall from my ankles, if I ever take any wife but you,' said Khaled. 'Yallah! So be it.'
When Zehowah heard him say this, even while Almasta's face was unveiled before him, she understood that he was greatly in earnest.
'Let me keep her for my handmaid,' she said at last.