“It is I, O my master, and with me Mâs the black.”
“O insolence! May their fathers perish!” cried Abd-ur-Rahman.
“Nay, curse them not, my son. They are folk of our own house. In my distress, when thou and Shibli and all others left me, this Zeyd was hands and feet and ears and eyes to me. Mâs thou knowest of old; I have no need to tell thee who he is. Continue, O my soul!”
“When I received the letter warning of thy coming, which reached me in the same hour when thou shouldst arrive, I knew not what countenance to adopt. Indeed my surprise was great, for I had not written to thee, and who, I wondered, could have informed thee of my existence in El Cûds? One half of me yearned for thy blessing, while the other hung back for fear lest by thy means some of my pretensions should be belied.
“When I beheld thee riding in so strange-looking a company, when I found thee resolute to pursue thy dealings with the Frank physician, I determined thenceforth to visit thee only in secret, and to refute every rumor of our relationship which might get abroad. Thanks to the garrulity of Hassan Agha, I was driven thrice to contradict that kind of rumor.”
The narrator paused, sobbing. Again a hollow groan from the mouth of the tunnel made him wince. But he soon recovered enough force to proceed in a broken voice:
“O my father, what is left to tell? Thou knowest the end of the story, how the shock of thy captivity drove out the devil which had so long possessed me; how I strove, tardily, to repair my fault. Now see, I am the dust before thee. My companions, for whose sake I sinned, now turn from me with sneers and cutting taunts. I am become unclean in their sight.
“And now, O my father, learn my firm resolve. I will at once resign my high position and the favor of my uncle, and return with thee to our little town in the wilds, there to end my days in thy peace and in the way of the upright.”
“God is Most Great! God is Most Merciful! Unto God the praise!” cried Mâs and Zeyd together from the night without.