Certain that eyes continually watched her, she forced herself to read; constantly on the lookout for danger, she smiled upon and spoke gently to the surly negress, who would not open her lips or respond in any way to her friendly advances. She was putting up a plucky fight against loneliness and anxiety. But it was not likely that Zarah should understand the moral strength which sustained the English girl in the long, weary days of silence and confinement. It would have suited the Arabian better to have seen her crying her eyes out, or pacing the floor in agitation; anything, in fact, rather than sitting quietly reading; so that she made a quick gesture of impatience, upon which Helen looked up, shut her book with a snap, and sprang to her feet.
“Zarah!” she cried. “It’s ages since I’ve seen you. You haven’t been near me since I was moved from my old place. Have you got rid of the bad prisoners? I am so tired of being cooped up in here!”
Zarah sat down on a pile of cushions and lit a cigarette, as an answer to her difficulties flashed across her mind at Helen’s words.
“You want to walk? You do not like being a pr-r-isoner-r your-r-self. You ar-r-e no pr-r-isoner. You must not go acr-r-oss ze plateau, but ozerwise ze place is all your-r-s.”
As one could not move out of the place without crossing the plateau, the all-ness seemed to be limited to the building and a small space behind, surrounded by towering rocks at which even the goats looked askance.
Helen knew it, and suddenly changed the subject. She wanted to get leave to wander about the place as she used to do; she wanted to find the secret path and to speak to Namlah; she wanted desperately to escape, but she knew Zarah’s astuteness and had a faint conception of her intense hatred for herself; so went warily in her demand for a little more liberty and changed the subject.
“I wonder what this building was used for?” she said, slowly passing her finger over a roughly carved stone panel, tracing the outline of a fish, some kind of a waterfowl and a cross, carved in the centre of a disc in the fifth century by the Holy Fathers. “The age almost makes me creep, and I often wonder if the dead fathers come back at night to walk about their old home.”
Zarah sprang to her feet in a positive whirlwind of gestures against spirits.
“You br-ring ze bad luck upon your-r-self and ze place, Helena. Nozing comes her-re or-r leaves her-r-e without my per-r-mission.”