She opened her eyes and looked into the handsome face as he carried her across the grounds. “You,” she said, raising her hand to touch a scar upon his forehead, then smiled at the stirring of love in her heart. “I knew you would come, for so it is written,” she whispered, and relapsed into unconsciousness just as Jane Cruikshanks ran from the house, followed by a stately Bedouin, who had been sent by the dying Sheikh to fetch his daughter home.
CHAPTER IV
“Him who goodness will not mend, evil will not mend.”—Arabic Proverb.
Zarah stood at the point of the great V which cleft the outer ring of the mountains, and from which started the path leading down to the plateau.
That the dying Sheikh’s daughter was expected there was no doubt, as showed the bonfires upon the mountain’s highest peaks, streaking the purple, starlit sky with orange flames; yet, save for the Arab who stood patiently near the spear which marked the beginning of the hidden path, with the camels which had brought them safely and at full speed across the desert and the quicksands, there was neither sign of life nor shout of greeting nor firing of rifles in salutation.
She looked back across the limitless, billowing desert, showing under the stars like a great ocean of endless, unbroken waves frozen into immobility as they surged from north to south, by some magician’s hand. She laughed softly at the thought of the civilization she had dropped, as one drops an outworn cloak from about the shoulders, and had left for ever upon the outskirts of the great desert of which she was the child. She looked ahead into the future and down the narrow path dividing her from the dying man, over whose kingdom in the heart of the mountains she would so shortly rule.
Giving no thought to her father in her utter selfishness, she laughed aloud in sheer delight at the picture conjured up by her ambition, laughed until the sweet, soft notes were flung against the rocks by the hot wind from the south and carried through the cleft down to the open space where they were thrown in echo, from this side to that side over the sparkling waters until they broke and were lost in the baying of the great dogs which, eyes red with hate and ruffs upstanding, fought to get out of the kennels so as to reach the woman they hated.
She shivered at the sound, although the hot wind from the south enfolded her like a blanket, and, suddenly overwhelmed with a desire to see some living creature in the place of death and shadows, took a quick step forward, then shrank behind a rock.