“Does she lie at ease, Excellency? If not, stretch her forth as though she passed the night in natural sleep. Let nothing cause her fret and thereby hasten her waking.”
Helen crossed to the divan and looked down at the merciless girl who had no pity for man or beast. She lay full length in the exquisite raiment she had worn for the tournament, her face half hidden in her arm, smiling like a child in her sleep. Helen watched her for a moment, then drew a satin coverlet over the Arabian’s feet, glanced round the room, moved slowly round the walls blowing out the lamps which hung from silver sconces, and returned to Yussuf.
“I will carry your Excellency down the steep unused path, for fear that some of those who wrestle with each other might see you. Come! I will lead you to where your lover waits, even I, blind Yussuf.”
Helen put her hand in his and looked back at the woman who had tried her best to humble her to the dust and failed. She touched her curls and smiled involuntarily at the thought that neither the daily round of menial tasks nor the threat of death had frightened her as had the threat to shave her head.
“I shall never be able to thank you, Yussuf,” she said, as he lifted her into his arms and carried her across the broad ledge upon which the Holy Fathers had built the dwelling-place.
“Put your arms about my neck, Excellency, for in times of stress must custom and thought of race vanish. I will hold you on my left arm; my right hand knoweth every jutting rock, my feet every stone upon this path. Shut your eyes, Excellency, for they say that one with vision would not dare to tread this road. We must hasten, for who knows if the tiger-cat will not waken ’neath the urging of her hate-filled mind? Your arm about my neck and your heart full of courage until the waning of the morning star, when you and your lover will be far upon the road to freedom and happiness.”
Helen did not shut her eyes, and until the end of her life she never forgot the descent.
Certain of every inch of the path, rendered as sure-footed as a goat through the blindness which had uprooted the dread spectre of fear from his mind, feeling with his feet, clinging with his hand, climbing, scrambling, dropping safely upon the narrowest foothold, Yussuf carried Helen safely by the hidden and almost unnegotiable path to where the dromedaries lay in the shadows.
Just once he stopped to give the pre-arranged signal.