“Are you afraid that I shall bewitch you?”
“Yes. I fear the Sabæan amulets. It is perhaps because of one of them that the master dreamed the bad dream which has made him ill and sad.”
“Cora, I love you so much.... Will you permit me to buy you from your master?”
“If you bought me, O Caleb, I should be a faithful slave and sing and play the harp to you. But I should be unhappy, even if I were your wife and free ... because I should be so far from my master....”
“Whom you love.”
Cora hesitated. Then she said:
“Whom I love, Caleb ... but as the flower loves the sun, as the moth loves the star ... from afar and from the depths ... without hope.”
The rain poured down in an endless grey sheet. In the garden, Master Ghizla was swearing at the slaves and wading, with tucked-up tunic and lean, hairy legs, through the puddles.
Caleb rose. He said nothing and went away, his head sunk in melancholy. Then he came back and resumed: