Why run the risk, he had argued to himself during the altercation between his host and the girl, of keeping a caged tiger which, in all probability, would maul the household if let loose, when tame cats, using their claws only upon each other, could be kept safely at large?
“‘More just than a balance’ art thou, O my brother” he quoted, stroking his beard, “but not for one thousand woebe filled with gold pieces and precious stones would I of her.”
In her fury at the man’s indifference and the insult to her beauty, Zarah brought her punishment upon herself.
“Thou wouldst not of me!” she stormed, as she stepped back and threw out her arms. “Of me! Thou, with thy beard thinning upon thy ageing face and thy person rounded as a mosque beneath thy belt.” She laughed shrilly, looking like some trapped, wild beast, with her flashing yellow eyes and perfect teeth. “Look to thy black slaves for thy cooking, to thy withered wives for dance and song. I have the blood of the whites in me, I——”
“’Tis a pity,” said the Emeer, making a gesture of resignation before the verbal storm which hurtled about his head. “Yea! ’tis a pity that thou dost not go to thy mother’s people and so rid our race of one who does it no honour!”
“Ah!” softly exclaimed Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, as he let slip the rosary of Mecca between his fingers. “Well said, O my guest! Thou showest the way, thou hold’st a torch to lighten my feet in the darkness; through thy words of wisdom shall peace fall upon my dwelling for a space and the whip upon the shoulders of she who has disgraced me.”
The men sat silent, the amber mouthpieces of the nagilehs between their lips, whilst Zarah, utterly undaunted, filled in the time by smoking innumerable cigarettes with her back turned to the dais, which childish and uncontrolled action caused the Emeer to smile in his thinning beard.
The Arab delights in deliberation and procrastination, and it is wise to let him talk round and round his subject or, if it please him better, to sit for long moments, even to the length of an hour, communing with his thoughts.
“Yea,” gently said the Sheikh at the end of twenty minutes’ hard thinking, “it is ordained. Thou, Zarah, O my daughter, shalt go to the big school in Cairo where attend the daughters of the whites who sojourn for a while in Egypt, and there shalt thou learn the manners and customs of thy mother’s people.”
If he had proposed strangling the girl on the spot she could not have shown more horror.