She shivered as the pictures flashed across her mind.
Zarah, lying like a tiger behind the golden bars of her elevated bed, laughed when Helen suddenly clasped her head in uncontrollable horror, twisting her fingers in her curls, and she laughed again when the white girl sprang to her feet and stood looking up with the world of rebellion in her eyes.
“Do you remember my vision, Helen, dear school-friend?” she said mockingly in Arabic, “when I saw you in the dust at my feet and the white man coming towards me? Verily will you be in the dust to-morrow, and so covered therewith that my children will walk upon you and cleanse their feet and sandals upon your raiment. You fool!” She slid her feet over the edge and stood upright upon the fourth step, straight, slender and very beautiful; then, balancing herself upon her precarious foothold with outstretched arms, descended slowly and walked to where Helen stood against the wall. She laughed as she looked at Helen’s golden curls.
“I hate you, Helen R-r-aynor-r. I hated you the first time I say you in Cairo, when you tried to show your superior breeding to the contemptible half-caste.”
“I did not.”
“You, whose grandfather was of a caste of water carriers, whilst my father’s fathers dwelt in the shadow of the Great Pharaohs and my mother at the Court of Spain. The white man shall see you with your shaven crown; then, when the picture of your bald head is set for eternity in his mind, so that, waking or sleeping, he will laugh at the thought of you, I will ride out to meet him in the desert, to sit with him under the moon, to talk with him until dawn, to sing to him until his eyes close in dreams of my beauty. You fool, to pit yourself against me!”
Helen smiled as she looked at the Arabian from head to foot. She was sick with fear of the morrow, and sick with disappointment at the absence of all sign of help, but she smiled with the indomitable spirit of the splendid race from which she sprang. She took no notice of Zarah when she stretched herself upon a divan in a corner of the room, nor of the body-women when they passed her, laughing derisively and making signs of contempt with their expressive fingers. She watched them descend the steps, and involuntarily listened to the jokes they bandied amongst themselves about the ceremony of shaving, which would take place at the waking of their mistress at the rising of the sun; then sat down with her back to the wall, hoping against hope for a sound or a sight of Namlah or Yussuf.
As there could be no doubt as to Zarah’s intention of carrying out her threat, the situation was desperate; and the help promised seemed so vague, hanging upon the chance that the Arabian would ask for sherbet or coffee before she went to sleep—if she went to sleep.
She was just as capable of staying awake the whole night, smoking her naghileh or countless cigarettes without touching food or coffee, as she was of sleeping, without stirring, until dawn.
And if she called for coffee and drank it, drugged, and slept, what then?