Now the rider draws rein and stops the dromedary; the sublime image of the desert-queen, silvered over with the moonlight, towers before them in majestic proportions.
"This is the desert-queen, the goddess of all the Bedouins!" cries Mohammed. "Do you wish to see her, Butheita? I am sorry for you, and would gladly remove the cloth from your head and eyes in order that you may see. But if you are cruel, you might tear my arms with your teeth. Will you do that, Butheita?"
She starts and shakes her head, inwardly rejoicing, for she recognizes these words, and remembers that she spoke them when he lay a prisoner on the cushion before her. And he now continues to speak just as she spoke then
"You shake your head, and I will trust you and loosen your bonds."
He quickly unties the cuffei and removes it from her head. She looks up at him who is bowed down over her, and the kind moon sheds her soft light upon them, and enables them to see each other.
Oh, happy moment! Forgotten is all, forgotten the long separation— forgotten, also, that her father will be angry and will grieve for her! She looks only at him, sees only him, and yet, as he now bends down closer, she turns her face aside.
Mohammed smiles and points to the sphinx. "Only look at the shadow the moon throws from the dromedary to the mouth of the sphinx! Look at the two heads there, they are our shadows, and they are kissing each other, Butheita!"
She utters a cry of delight. These were her very words, and, as then, he says, bending over her:
"Why should our shadows only kiss each other? Why not our lips, too?"
But she shakes her head and says, as she then said: