“Has there been any change to-day?” he wrote.
Zaroba read the words.
“None,” she replied.
“She has not moved?”
“Not a finger.”
He paused, pencil in hand,—then he wrote—
“You are ill-tempered. You have your dark humour upon you.”
Zaroba’s eyes flashed, and she threw up her skinny hands with a wrathful gesture.
“Dark humour!” she cried in accents that were almost shrill—“Ay!—and if it be so, El-Râmi, what is my humour to you? Am I anything more to you than a cipher,—a mere slave? What have the thoughts of a foolish woman, bent with years and close to the dark gateways of the tomb, to do with one who deems himself all wisdom? What are the feelings of a wretched perishable piece of flesh and blood to a self-centred god and opponent of Nature like El-Râmi-Zarânos?” She laughed bitterly. “Pay no heed to me, great Master of the Fates invisible!—superb controller of the thoughts of men!—pay no heed to Zaroba’s ‘dark humours,’ as you call them. Zaroba has no wings to soar with—she is old and feeble, and aches at the heart with a burden of unshed tears,—she would fain have been content with this low earth whereon to tread in safety,—she would fain have been happy with common joys,—but these are debarred her, and her lot is like that of many a better woman,—to sit solitary among the ashes of dead days and know herself desolate!”
She dropped her arms as suddenly as she had raised them. El-Râmi surveyed her with a touch of derision, and wrote again on the slate: