The girl laughed very low.
'Did I not know you for a man of little faith?' she asked. 'I have shown you my arm from the wrist to the shoulder. Is it not like the tusk of a young elephant? Yet you have not believed. I have shown you my ankles, and you have seen me span them with my fingers as I sat at the door, yet you believed not. I have unveiled my face, which it is a shame to do, but you could not believe. I have come to you in the starlight when you were asleep, and still you have no faith that I love you, though I shall be cast out to perish if I am found here. But I will give you a little handful of rubies, and you will believe, and take me, when I have shown you where you may get thousands like them.'
She took from her neck a bag of antelope skin, no larger than her closed hand, and gave it to him with the thin thong by which it had hung. [{6}]
'When you have seen them in the sun you will want others,' she said. 'I will take you to the place, and when you have filled your sack with them you will love me enough to take me away. It is not far to the place. In two hours we can go and come. To-morrow night, about this time, I will wake you again. It will not be safe to unbar the door, so you must let me down from this roof by a camel rope, and then follow me.'
When Baraka was gone the stranger sat up on his carpet and opened the small bag to feel the stones, for he knew that he could hardly see them in the starlight; but even the touch and the weight told him something, and he guessed that the girl had not tried to deceive him childishly with bits of glass. Though the bag had been in her bosom, and the weather was hot, the stones were as cold as jade; and moreover he felt their shape and knew at once that they might really be rough rubies, for he was well versed in the knowledge of precious stones.
When the day began to dawn he went down from the roof to the common room of the fore-house, where guests were quartered, yet although there was no other stranger there he would not take the bag from his neck to examine the stones, lest some one should be watching him from a place of hiding; but afterwards, when he was alone in the foot-hills and out of sight of the town, searching as usual for new plants and herbs, he crept into a low cave at noon, and sat down just inside the entrance, so that he could see any one coming while still a long way off, and there he emptied the contents [{7}] of the little leathern wallet into his hand, and saw that Baraka had not deceived him; and as he looked closely at the stones in the strong light at the entrance of the cave, the red of the rubies was reflected in the blue of his bright eyes, and made a little purple glare in them that would have frightened Baraka; and he smiled behind his great yellow beard.
He took from an inner pocket a folded sheet on which a map was traced in black and green ink, much corrected and extended in pencil; and he studied the map thoughtfully in the cave while the great heat of the day lasted; but the lines that his eye followed did not lead towards Persia, Palestine, and Egypt, where Baraka wished to live with him in a marble palace and eat fat quails and fig paste.
She came to him again that night on the roof, bringing with her a small bundle, tightly rolled and well tied up. He wrapped his blanket round her body, and brought it up under her arms so that the rope should not hurt her when her weight came upon it, and so he let her down over the edge of the roof to the ground, and threw the rope after her; and he let himself over, holding by his hands, so that when he was hanging at the full length of his long arms he had only a few feet to drop, for he was very tall and the fore-house was not high, and he wished to take the rope with him.
Baraka's house was at the head of the town, towards the foot-hills; every one was sleeping, and there was no moon. She followed the stony sheep-track that struck into the hills only a few hundred paces from [{8}] the last houses, and the stranger followed her closely. He had his sack on his shoulder, his book of plants and herbs was slung behind him by a strap, and in his pockets he had all the money he carried for his travels and his letters to the chiefs, and a weapon; but he had left all his other belongings, judging them to be of no value compared with a camel-bag full of rubies, and only a hindrance, since he would have to travel far on foot before daylight, by dangerous paths.
The girl trod lightly and walked fast, and as the man followed in her footsteps he marked the way, turn by turn, and often looked up at the stars overhead as men do who are accustomed to journeying alone in desert places. For some time Baraka led him through little valleys he had often traversed, and along hillsides familiar to him, and at last she entered a narrow ravine which he had once followed to its head, where he had found that it ended abruptly in a high wall of rock, at the foot of which there was a clear pool that did not overflow. It was darker in the gorge, but the rocks were almost white, so that it was quite possible to see the way by the faint light.