“Helen!” she said quietly, and sat upright, clasping her hands about her knees, when the Nubian laughed and nodded his head.
“So,” she said slowly, “he loves her! Yet has she said no word of him, neither wears she his likeness upon her breast, which, O Asad, is a sickly habit of those who love in northern climes. I have sat with her, watched over her in her fever, yet has she said no word of him, neither found I aught in her garments when I searched them, and the ring that is upon her finger is but a trifle from the bazaar.”
That Helen’s engagement ring happened to be a scarab inscribed with words of power, and worth a great price, she was not to know.
“Namlah, the body-woman who tends her, has she found naught?”
Zarah laughed as she turned and looked at the stars through the window, outside which stood a dusky slip of an eavesdropper.
“Oh, she, the fool, she thinks of naught but the wounds upon her back and the failure of her son to return from the battle. In her stupidity is she the safest of all to wait upon the white girl? Yet how can I make use of this Helen, who has vexed my spirit since first we met? How can I pay back the laughs and torments of her companions at that thrice accursed school if she does not love this man?”
“He loves her, O Zarah!” guilelessly remarked the Nubian, who was finding rare balm for his own wound in the hurt of his mistress.
Zarah flung herself round and struck at the handsome, stolid face with the loaded whip she kept handy in case of an emergency with her four-footed pet.
“Thou fool!” she stormed. “Keep thy mouth closed upon such words. What knowest thou of the ways of white men and women? They travel together with as much freedom as though they were brother and sister; they dance in each other’s arms; they go to the festival together, returning alone at the rising of the sun; they ride and drive and work together, yet are they but friends, there being naught of love between them. Thinkest thou that the man would look twice upon yon woman, who is the colour of a garment which has hung overlong in the sun, if I were at his side, dost thou?”
In her wrath she looked like one of the restless birds of vivid plumage which sang or moved incessantly in the golden cages standing against the walls; but Al-Asad wisely refrained from answering the question, as he glanced at them and thought of the joy some men find in the homely sparrow.