“Shelter is given to the camel, meat to the dog, water to the horse at the end of a day of toil,” he said slowly. “What reward will be given this slave if he removes the cloud from before the sun of his mistress’s happiness?”
“Thou! A reward given unto thee?” She could hardly have shown more astonishment if he had asked for the heaped-up contents of her jewel safe. “My father gave thee shelter when thou didst flee from the wrath of those who desired thy life, dates when thy bones pierced thy skin, water when thou wast wellnigh dead from thirst. A reward? Behold, the whip across thy mouth will be thy reward for thy daring, thou mongrel!”
She had worked herself into a rare rage, and flung herself to the far end of the couch, so that an end of the silken wrapper became untucked; and she beat upon the cushions with clenched fists, thereby causing the loosened garment to slip yet lower still, until it exposed the splendid shoulders, which looked the more bewitching in that they were half draped.
Alas! that it be so hard a task to drill into the heads of women the simple truth that, where décollétage is concerned, a hint is far more potent than a whole hard fact.
“A reward for thee?” she repeated. “For thee?”
“Yea, a date, a drop of water....” He paused, then rose and walked to the door and looked up at the stars and laughed at the thought of the gift he would pluck from paradise. “Yea, a date for the camel and water for the horse, but a kiss—one kiss—from thy mouth, which is as a red flower fashioned in rubies and set with pearls which are thy teeth. Nay, fling not thyself upon thy slave, for he could break thee with one hand. The camel works not without reward, the horse dies without water, thy slave will not reveal his plan without the promise of that which he craves.”
“But the camel and the horse fulfil their tasks,” said Zarah sweetly, slowly, baiting her trap, into which the simple barbarian would ultimately fall. “The reward comes afterwards, O Al-Asad, when the heat of the day is o’er and the peace of the night falleth apace. Come!”
She held out her hand and he ran to her, ran as swiftly as a deer, as noiselessly as the lion watching them out of tawny, half-closed eyes, and knelt at her feet and encircled her with his arms without touching her withal.
“Thou wilt—thou wilt—when my plan is unfolded—my tale is told—thou wilt?”
Zarah the liar, the hypocrite, the merciless, smiled gently as she looked down into the handsome face so near her own, nodded her head as she listened, and pushed away the encircling arms as she rose to her feet and moved a few steps.