"But, woman, do you mean to tell me that you have no idea of the translation put upon your movements?"
"Evidently not," haughtily replied the inwardly laughing girl.
"That you do not know the movement you made just now meant that in the dimness of the night I—oh! I cannot tell you, but I swear before Allah that I—I, Hahmed, who have known no woman, will teach you the translation of every movement of all that you have learned."
Whereupon Jill, having seated herself upon the stuffed head of an enormous lion skin, murmured "soit," and proceeded to light a cigarette.
Her second and favourite pastime was riding, and, in as few words as possible, so that my book shall not ramble to unseemly length, I will tell you how the fame of her horsemanship had come to be spoken of, even in the almost untrodden corners of Asia and Egypt.
The whim seizing her, she would bid the Arab to her presence, sometimes to her evening repast, sometimes to sweet coffee and still sweeter music, sometimes to wander on foot or on camel-back through the oasis, to the desert stretching like a great sea beyond, and still beyond.
Everything, as you will note if you have the patience to get through to the end of this book, happened to Jill in the light of the full moon. On this night in question, clad all in black, with the moonbeams striking rays from the silver embroidered on her veil, and the anklets above her little feet, she seemed small and fragile, altogether desirable, and infinitely to be protected to the man beside her on the edge of the sand. Still more so when she waxed ecstatic with delight on the approach of two horses, one bay ridden by a man clothed from head to foot in white burnous, and a led mare as white as the man's raiment.
"Hahmed! O! Hahmed! Stop them!" had she cried, forgetting the ice out of which she had elected to hack herself a pedestal. "Oh, you beauty, you priceless thing!" she continued, when the mare, whinnying gently, rubbed its muzzle on her shoulder; whereupon she took the rein from the servant who had dismounted, and led the beast up and down.
Perfect she stood, the Breeze of the Desert, with her flowing tail high set, her streaming mane, the little ears so close together as to almost touch, her great chest, and dainty hoofs which scarcely deigned to touch the sand.
Bit and bridle she had none, her sole harness consisting of a halter with a leather rein on the right side, and a rug upon her back hardly kept in place by a loose girth. It seemed that she was of the Al Hamsa, which, being translated, means being a direct descendant of one of the five great mares of the time of Mohammed; also she was a two-year-old and playful but not over friendly, therefore was it astounding to see her as she listened to the girl's musical voice, and showed no fretfulness at the touch of a strange hand.