That the woman might be a spy did not once enter her head, and if it had, under the strength of her love and her anxiety, she would doubtlessly have thrown caution to the soft night wind and risked her life in an endeavour to find out if there was not some way of escape by which she could return to the man she loved.
Her own clothes, cleansed and pressed by Namlah’s busy fingers, had been returned to her, so that she stood, a beautiful picture of an English girl, in the strangest of strange surroundings, looking down into the shadows out of which, she prayed, help might come to her.
Afraid of her outline against the sky, fearful of dislodging some stone to send it clattering down the steps, she wrapped the blue sheet round herself and descended slowly, carefully, pausing to listen, standing to peer into the ink-black shadows on every side, and down to the plateau where, by the light of torches and of fires, she could see men and women passing to and fro.
She had almost reached the great boulder, when she stopped and drew the dark silk still tighter and peered about uneasily, as she tried to locate a soft hissing sound which came from some spot quite near to her.
Through bitter experience she had learned the ways of Arabia’s scorpions, centipedes, wasps and flies; had fled in terror from the one and only aboo hanekein she had encountered, a fat, poisonous brute of a spider with formidable pincers, and wrestled vainly against the great variety of ants which the Peninsula offers; of locusts she had but the slightest acquaintance, and of the deadly vipers, the Rukla and the Afar, which abound in rocks she had only been warned that afternoon.
Yet for fear of someone mounting the steps she dared not remain where she was, and had just decided to risk the few yards which would bring her to the boulder, when once more she caught the hissing sound.
And then from sheer relief she almost laughed.
“Sit!” whispered Yussuf from the shadows. “Ya Sit! Sit!”
She crept forward and round the boulder to where stood the blind man, who had been perfectly aware of her noiseless descent. She did not shrink at the terrible face, twisted and scarred, which looked down upon her; rather did her heart go out to the maimed man as she laid her hand upon his arm and called him by name.
“I trust you, Yussuf,” she said simply, which is quite one of the best ways of winning the heart of an embittered man.