She came quickly, Zarah the beautiful, the tender, the pitiful, Zarah the most perfect hypocrite and liar, and sat at his feet upon the floor, appropriately clothed in black and silver, with the lower part of her lovely face semi-hidden by a yashmak, over which her beautiful eyes gazed into his with an expression which would have deceived even the astutest old Holy Father.
“Where is Helen Raynor?”
He asked the question abruptly, taking her unawares.
She had intended telling him—if he should remember the Nubian’s story—that Helen had returned to Hutah under escort and had perished in the locust storm, but the abrupt question took her off her guard.
“She is dead and buried in the quicksands,” she lied instantly, uncontrollably, infinitely unwisely, without giving a thought to the far-reaching effects of the lie.
“Dead! My God! When? How?”
Seeing the terrible mistake she had made, seeing no way out of it, she backed the lie, planning in a flash to give a slight foundation to the disastrous mistake by getting rid of the girl that very night. She laid her henna-tipped, jewelled hand upon Ralph Trenchard’s and told him the sad story of Helen Raynor’s death, and mopped her melting, dry eyes with the corner of the silken sheet as she answered his horrified questions.
“ ... yes! I made a gr-r-reat effort to save her-r, my dear-r schoolmate,” she said, “but, alas! kismet, Allah had decr-r-r-eed other-r-wise....” Her arms showed like creamy-yellow ivory as she raised them dutifully above her downcast head in a gesture that showed off her alluring figure to perfection. “ ... Nay! dear-r Helena said no wor-rd, she just died. Wher-r-re? Oh! in a bed. Yes! here in the mountain dwelling. By the mercy of Mohammed the Pr-r-ophet did she die, so zat her face should be a beautiful memor-r-y to her fr-r-ien’s, even if I, Zarah ...” She struck her breast with a beautiful gesture of resignation, but not hard enough to mark it, even in her intense grief. “ ... Yea! even if I, Zarah, shall have to car-r-y the dr-r-readful picture of it, all br-r-oken, before my eyes until ze day when death shall claim me also.” When Ralph Trenchard shivered in absolute horror, she shivered also, perhaps out of sympathy for him, perhaps to impress the thought of the English girl’s face upon him—who knows? Then she got up and trailed across the floor to a table laden with drinks of divers sweetness and coolness.
He looked at the exquisite picture she made, and, longing to hear more about the girl he loved, stretched out his hand; and she looked at him with the love of all women in her glorious eyes, and walked back to him swiftly and with all the grace of her Spanish mother, carrying a tray with glasses of frothing sherbet, which he did not want or touch.