She brought from the cabinet a small box, exquisitely enamelled and inlaid with mother-of-pearl.
“Keep it safely concealed in your cloak, Halima. It does not lock, but opens by pressing this spring—so!” The lid flew back, disclosing a quantity of gold and gems and a silken purse; and after permitting the girl to glance within she closed the cover, snapping it into place. “Now that you have seen the contents, my child, you will not care to open it again. Keep it well fastened until it is in David’s hands.”
The girl promised to obey, and taking the box started at once to perform her mission. It seemed to her a queer hour—the dead of night—to carry a present to a Jew; but the whims of Maie were past accounting for, and the duty of a slave was to obey without question.
Left to herself, Maie glanced at the hour-glass and hastily caught up the mantle which she had discarded the better to display her charms to her father. She wound the robe carelessly about her shoulders, pressed a panel in the wall, and gained egress by a narrow stairway to the gardens.
“It is very dark,” she murmured, feeling her way along a path; “but so much the better. My Allison will not need a light to know that it is I!”
Onward she crept, turning the angles of the hedges with unerring instinct, until she paused beneath a group of stately siszandras where the shadows were even deeper than elsewhere. But her eyes, growing accustomed to the darkness, soon made out the dim outlines of a stone bench, and she stooped and passed her hands along its length until she discovered that it was vacant.
“He is late,” she whispered; “or perhaps I am a moment early. He will come soon.”
Languidly she reclined upon the bench, her face turned toward the carved pillars that marked the Gate of the Griffins, standing but a few paces away like silhouettes against the murky sky.
After a few minutes’ lapse a key clicked in a lock; a stealthy foot-fall reached her ears, and the next moment a man knelt beside her.
“Ah, sweet one!” he whispered, clasping his arms around her yielding form and covering her face with kisses; “again for a few moments I may enjoy paradise with you by my side! I have been very impatient, my Maie, for this hour.”