The hate of these docile creatures for the white girl, planted and fostered by the men who had been so led astray by Al-Asad, was most truly to be feared a hundred times more than the instinctive hate of the dogs for the Arabian. They had done their best to please this foreigner, cooking for her, mending her clothes, fetching and carrying for her and waiting upon her; when their men had come back raving of her beauty and her horsemanship, the meek, downtrodden souls, who had lost their looks and their figures through hard work and overmuch child-bearing, had said no word, but when they had heard the tales of the beautiful white girl’s mimicry of their efforts to please her, then they had vowed to themselves to be revenged upon her and at the first opportunity.
The news of the dogs’ escape had reached them. The opportunity had arrived, and perhaps a double opportunity for revenge, for why should the dogs not pull both the women down so that they should be quit of their dreaded mistress and the foreigner.
When the child passed on Helen’s words they crept swiftly down the steps and up to the kennels, and hid themselves amongst the rocks to wait just a little longer.
“No! don’t come with me, beloved,” Helen said, as she stood on the top of the dais steps pressed close to her lover’s side, with the dogs leaping and barking at her feet. “A love such as ours must come right in the end, and I don’t believe she meant what she said.”
In which she was mistaken, as she was to learn.
“Then, until we meet again, dear heart! I don’t like you doing this, somehow.”
“She wouldn’t let us be together, Ra! It’s wiser not to make her really angry!”
He held her close, and kissed her, and watched her run down the steps into the middle of the dogs, which nearly knocked her down in their exuberance; and watched her laughing, calling, whistling, as she ran down the hall, followed by them all, whilst the men, who were but children in their wrath and very good-tempered children when left alone, shouted their admiration.
She turned at the door, beautiful, radiant, and held out her arms.
“Ra!” she called. “Ra! beloved!” and disappeared into the night, the rocks echoing the barking of the dogs.