A charming smile again lights up her brown countenance. With a joyous nod of her head, she bounds out of the tent.
CHAPTER III
THE AGREEMENT.
THE sun was already low in the heavens. The palm trees in the neighboring wood of Petresin threw long shadows across the yellow sand, and yet Sheik Arnhyn had not yet come, and Mohammed waited in vain for intelligence concerning his captor's purposes.
He had again been seated with Butheita on the mat, and had eaten with her as in the morning.
He had endeavored to chat gayly with the Queen of the Desert; but her quick eye had read in his countenance that a cloud rested on his soul, and the brightness faded from her eyes.
She turned to him when he had risen from the mat and was walking thoughtfully, to and fro in the narrow tent. "Tell me, O stranger, is your heart so very sad? Is there nothing Butheita can do for you. You are wearied; this space is too narrow for you. Your soul, whose wings are pinioned, would fly out into the world. The world without is very beautiful, I know."
"Do you know this world?" asked Mohammed, his lips smiling as he looked at her.
"Yes, I do," said she. "I have been with father to Tantah several times. While there I heard the scha-er tell their beautiful stories of Ey-Zahir. I listened with breathless attention. And then, too, I heard the female singers, the Gavasi. They sang beautiful songs, and the words and tones have often since resounded in my heart. Do you know, sarechsme, that often, when my father had gone out with his Bedouins to fight or to plunder, as was sometimes the case, then my only pleasure was to take down the zammarah bisoan, on which my mother played, and sing to its accompaniment the songs I had learned from the Gavasi. "Shall I sing them for you? Shall I?" But you must not laugh at me for repeating what the Gavasi sang in Tantah."
Without awaiting a reply, she took down the little bagpipe with its bag of goat-skin, and to its shrill accompaniment sang a quaint love-song with an admixture of the comic.