"I wish I could believe you!"
"But you must believe me! Something tells me some of our good chaps are still alive. All of them perhaps."
"Impossible!" He shook his head. "Even if they escaped the explosion, the Jannati Shahr devils must have massacred them." He shuddered slightly. "That's the worst of it. Death is all right. But the crucifixion, and all—"
"Cold reason paints a cruel picture, I admit," the woman answered, laying a hand on the man's. "But you know—a woman's intuition. I don't believe as you do. And the major—and that rumor we got from old Nasr ed Din, the Hejaz rug-merchant down on Hester Street, how about that?"
"Yes, I know. But—"
"How could a rumor like that come through, about a big, white-skinned, red-haired Ajam slave held by that tribe near Jeddah? How could it, unless there were some truth back of it?"
"He wandered away into the desert, quite insane. It's not impossible he might have been captured. By Allah!" And the man struck the table hard. "If I really believed Nasr ed Din—"
"Well?"
"I'd go again, if I died for it!"
"The pronoun's wrong. We'd go!"