He did not deceive himself. His desperate mood was the result of an infernal rage against himself, a rage against the weakness of his heart. Fortune Chedsoye. Why had she not crossed his path at that time when he might have been saved? And yet, would she have saved him? God alone knew.
He heard Jones stirring in his room next door. Presently all became still. To sleep like that! He shrugged, threw off his coat, swept the cover from the stand, found a pack of cards, and played solitaire till the first pallor of dawn announced the new day.
Reclining snugly against the parapet, wrapped in his tattered arbiyeh, or cloak, his head pillowed upon his lean arm, motionless with that pretended sleep of the watcher, Mahomed-El-Gebel kept his vigil. Miles upon miles he had come, across three bleak, cold, blinding deserts, on camels, in trains, on camels again, night and day, day and night, across the soundless, yellow plains. Allah was good to the true believer. The night was chill, but certain fires warmed his blood. All day long he had followed the accursed, lying giaour, but never once had he wandered into the native quarters of the city. Patience! What was a day, a week, a year? Grains of sand. He could wait. Inshalla!
[CHAPTER VIII]
THE PURLOINED CABLE
George, having made his bargain with conscience relative to the Yhiordes rug, slept the sleep of the untroubled, of the just, of the man who had nothing in particular to get up for. In fact, after having drunk his breakfast cocoa and eaten his buttered toast, he evinced his satisfaction by turning his face away from the attracting morning light and passing off into sleep again. And thereby hangs this tale.
So much depended upon his getting his mail as it came in that morning, that Fate herself must have resisted sturdily the desire to shake him by the shoulder. Perhaps she would have done so but for the serenity of his pose and the infantile smile that lingered for a while round his lips. Fate, as with most of us, has her sentimental lapses.