"You beautiful darling!" he said, as he crushed her up, to the derangement of her perfumed silks and satins and many jewels. "It's just heavenly coming back to you, you dear, understanding mother."
The woman's heart leapt to battle, for in the last words, in the way her beloved son looked down upon her in the tone of his voice, she knew that, somewhere out in the world, he had received a hurt. She knew so little of him, had only had him for such a little, little while under the influence of her love and in the shelter of her heart, and she loved him, her firstborn, with a love beyond words. Thinking to do the best for him, and making the biggest mistake of all, beating down her beloved husband's opposition, she had sent the boy to England, and in the subsequent eight years had only seen him twice.
"He is of the East, Woman of my Heart! Behold, I have studied him," had said the Sheikh, all those years ago. "Let him be, else evil may befall him."
But Jill, his beautiful wife, had insisted, and his love for her being beyond telling, the great Arab had submitted to her wish.
For so it had been written.
And what can be the outcome of the tragic mixing of blood? Nothing but pain.
"Come to the roof and talk, Mother, under the stars."
So up the marble staircase, with his arm about her waist, to the roof they went, where the silken awnings lay folded and the scented white flowers hung asleep.
They stood under the canopy of purple night studded with flashing, silvery points, as the soft winds carried to them the notes of a guitar softly thrummed in the shade of the palms.
"It is Mary, dear," happily whispered the woman. "She came with me to welcome you." And then she clasped her hands at the blaze of anger which swept the man's face.