The transport past, he sat beside Iskender, with arm about his neck. Some girls at a round game in the shadow of the church caught his wandering eye. He called his friend's attention to the good looks of Nesîbeh, who was one of them. Iskender turned his head and threw a careless glance in the direction indicated.
"Thou hast not seen her properly. Wait a minute!… O Nesîbeh! O my pearl! Come hither!… Ah, the rogue has fled to hiding; she has slipped inside the church; and the rest, her playmates, are flying, each to her mother's side, as if my sweet-toned voice had been a lion's roar! A year ago she would have flung herself into my arms, and sat upon my knee and begged for stories. But now she wears the veil, she is a woman, and therefore must be captious like the rest of them. In thy grace I depart, having much to put in order for to-morrow's journey."
Once more he flung both arms around Iskender's neck, kissing him on both cheeks and on the mouth, and vowing by Our Lady, and by the three Archangels, Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, to repay him half the treasure of the Valley of the Kings.
CHAPTER XXIX
Left alone, Iskender took up a position in which he could watch the open door of the church without seeming to do so. Then, as soon as he beheld Nesîbeh peeping out, he opened his paint-box, laid his sketch-book on his knee, and made believe to set to work in earnest, crooning a facetious song the while, to complete the deception. His object was to tempt or provoke the girl to come to him. For days past she had withstood all his allurements, taking to her heels at his approach. He desired an explanation of such queer behaviour, and, having learnt that frankness was of no avail, resorted now to subtlety.
After a space of apparent absorption in his work, he hazarded a glance out of the corners of his eyes, and was glad to see that she was drawing nearer. From the glimpse thus obtained he judged her discontented, sullen, even angry, and suspected some hostility to be the object of her stealing up behind him. But he was quite unprepared for what actually happened. A large stone, flung at close quarters with all the strength of her young arms, struck him fairly between the shoulders, just where the bruises resultant from yesterday's beating most thickly congregated. It knocked all the breath out of his body. The shock, however, stood him in good stead; since it prevented his acting on the first angry impulse of retaliation, and at the same time gave him a look of genuine anguish. In a trice she was at his side, weeping and imploring his forgiveness.
"Say thou art not badly hurt—say it, I implore thee. By my life, I should die if I had injured thee."
Iskender did his best to personate the last agony, writhing and rolling his eyes, and clutching at the air with palsied hands. In despair of soothing one in that condition, she changed mood swiftly and became defiant.
"No matter," she sneered. "Thou art not hurt to death; and by Allah thou deservest any suffering in return for the shame and humiliation thou hast put upon me. What was that Frank—curse his religion!—to thee, that thou must go every hour only to watch the house where he lay ill? He had cast thee off, when I came and comforted thee. Yet is he dearer! O the disgrace to me to have offered my love and to be thus rejected! Would to Allah I had never seen thy dirty, ugly, wicked—thy accursed face! It is the face of a pig, of an afrît; so now thou knowest! What had I ever done to harm thee that, after speaking to me of love and asking for me, thou didst turn thy back and spurn me for the sake of a vile foreigner who has blackened thy face and made of thee a byword for infamy? I heard thee ask my father; and I heard his answer. There was hope for thee. Why has thy mother never come to talk with mine? By Allah, I will take that stone again and kill thee with it; for it seems that I am nothing in thy eyes, O misbegotten!"