For long minutes thus knelt she alone with her happiness, and then she raised herself whilst a great sob shook her from head to foot.
"Hahmed," she cried as she flung her arms out wide, "Hahmed, wherever thou art I am calling thee. Hahmed, Hahmed!" and fell face downward unconscious upon the sand covered floor.
Noiselessly an Arab stepped from behind a pillar, crossing to the still figure on the ground, and gently he picked her up in his arms, covering her in the folds of his great white cloak.
"Little bird! little bird!" he whispered in the beautiful Arabian tongue, "why willst thou beat thy tender wings against the bars of happiness around thy dwelling? And thou wert frightened—frightened by yon peasant woman. What said she, my dove, to strike thee senseless to the ground?
"Thou art pale, O! my heart's delight, and weigh but as a handful of down upon my arm, and yet must thou learn thy lesson, to the end; and even will I forsake thee, leaving thee guided by the star of happiness to find thy way alone to thy dwelling in the desert. Yea! there will I await thee, O! my beloved—beloved!"
And Hahmed passed swiftly through the hall of shadows, and down the fields of waving corn and sweet scented bean to the banks of the Nile, and there he placed his sweet burden in the arms of the faithful native woman, who tenderly wiped the sand from the golden curls and raised her right hand in fealty to her master as he turned away, neither did she falter in her tale to Mary and Jack when, goaded by anxiety and in spite of the heat, they ran down towards the boat.
"Sunstroke!" said Mary, who had a certificate for first-aid, and speaking with the certain flat determination which even her best friends found most trying at times. "You simply cannot go about in Egypt without a green-lined umbrella. Yes! it's a slight, quite slight attack of sunstroke," she continued, without noticing the radiance of Jill's eyes, "and I will apply this damp handkerchief to your medulla oblongata."
CHAPTER XLIX
Jill sat on the edge of her bed in an hotel at Suez.
That she was absolutely alone in Egypt, and ought not to have been alone, never entered her head once, as she gazed through the open window towards the sea.