"My lord, I have heard her," returned the woman, in a subdued fashion, not sure that Baba had not found the real solution of their difficult problem.
"And thy words, woman?"
"May my lord accomplish his will," she replied, disclaiming all further responsibility.
My lord, who by this time began to find himself not absolutely certain of his will, bit his lip and looked thoughtfully from Baba to Ramûa, and back again. The goat-girl sat at his feet, curled up like a kitten, her eyes staring unwinkingly into his face, her lips pressed together in apparent anxiety. Her whole ensemble struck Ribâta as peculiarly pleasing. Ramûa was hiding her face from his gaze, and certainly her figure was not so graceful as that of her sister. Baba was not pretty, in the correct sense of the word; but Baba, he felt, would not weep for another in his presence.
"Straighten thy garments, bold one, and rise up. Thou shalt come with me," he said, suddenly, with a half shrug of the shoulders.
Ramûa quivered, whether with delight or displeasure she scarcely knew. At any rate, it was not to Baba that she turned. Baba was strange to her, all of a sudden; was some one to pity, perhaps, but also to be ashamed for. Her good-bye to her sister was reluctant and very gentle, but not warm. Beltani, satisfied, now that one daughter had found wealth and the other a husband, kissed her little one light-heartedly. Black Bazuzu pressed his lips to each of her bare feet, feeling her quite as worthy of the homage as his sovereign could be. Last of all, on her way out of the house of her childhood, Baba passed Charmides. His blue eyes looked into hers for an instant with an expression of puzzled distaste. She had won for him his life's happiness. This was all his thanks. Baba knew his mind, and a dull, half-human smile crept over her face—a smile that Ribâta would not have thought pretty had he been watching her just then. On the threshold of the door, however, Zor was standing; and as she perceived her goat, which she had always loved better than she loved herself, she suddenly seized the creature by its silken hair and gave it a wrench that drew from Zor a long bleat of indignation. Ribâta, catching this proceeding on the part of his new possession, laughed deeply. Here, at last, was something original.
Day had crept in upon Baba in her new home before, at last, she could turn her face to the wall of her luxurious prison-house, and wail out her little agony alone, in the pale, golden light of the new dawn.