'Eat some, my pigeon--a morsel, beloved! Why wilt not be comforted, child? Say what is in thy heart, and if Zainub's old hands can compass it, 'tis thine.
'I want nothing. Let me be,' muttered Azîzan.
Zainub rocked herself to and fro, partly in despair, partly to allay a sharper twinge of the enemy, and looked round dismally as if for some inspiration of comfort. There was not much to suggest it in those bare walls, inexpressibly squalid, dirty beyond belief; save the cemented floor, which underwent a daily sprinkling from a skin water-bag, and a daily lashing with a reed broom. There was a mark of the passage of that skin bag up the narrow stairs in a cleaner streak along the grimy walls, and a mark of that reed broom in the spatter-work dado of slush round the room. The smoke of rushlights blackened the arched niches, their oily dribblings seamed the once whitewashed walk below, and centuries of cobwebs hung on the rough rafters. There was no furniture of any sort or kind, excepting the low stool on which Zainub crouched, and the string cot whereon the girl had flung herself recklessly. Not even resting fairly, but half on, half off, each listless curve showing her indifferent despair; her flimsy veil crushed into a pillow, her unkempt yet braided hair showing she had not thought of it for days. No uncommon sight in the zenana, when so and so's 'constitution is disturbed,' as the phrase runs.
'Would it soothe thee to talk of it?' whined the old lady.
'No! no!' Azîz sat up in sudden anger. 'I hate him. I hate everybody.' Then, her own confused emotion being strange and new to her, she sought refuge with a whimper in her old sullenness.
'Ari! pretty one,' replied Zainub, relieved at something tangible. 'Thou art right to hate him. Yet grieve not, since he hath gained naught of thee. Thou hast passed him by scornfully.'
On the face turned to the dirty wall something like a smile quivered.
'He hath the pot--the Ayôdhya pot,' murmured Azîz half to herself. 'He kept that--he liked that.' The duenna beat her shrivelled hands together and laughed shrilly.
'Wah illâh! he hath kept it, sure enough, but he will rue it. Look you! I know not the ins and outs; yet will the pot bring him evil. Yea! even though he hath given it to the mem up-stairs.'
Azîzan was on her feet ere the words were finished, her eyes aflame, her whole figure trembling with excitement.