“I!” she exclaimed. “Why, I have nothing!”
“Ah, but you have,” came the low reply. “The desire in the heart. That is the only thing worth giving, and that you have. But you shall have still another. Come here in the morning at sunrise, and you will find it on the sands.”
The radiant creature glided away in the light, that dimmed as she went, and in a moment Zuleika could see only the desert and her father’s camp beyond the rock.
Creeping down, she went back to the tent to bed. But the beauty of the shining creature was in her eyes and brain, and she could not sleep. Eagerly she waited for the coming of morning, and as soon as she heard a stirring beyond the tents, and knew that Hassan, the camel keeper, was looking after the animals, she bounded out of bed and down to the place of rock. Her mother saw her go, but thought nothing about it, for it was the time of gray dawn when every Arab looks in prayer toward Mecca, and she was probably going to the fairy rock for her devotions. But Zuleika thought of something besides her prayers.
When she came to the spot she stared around, wondering if it could be the place she had visited in the night. Then only a glittering waste stretched far as the eye could reach. Now there was a tree, straight and branchless almost to the crown, where from beneath wide-spreading leaves hung bunches of pulpy fruit. Nothing like it had been seen on the desert before.
Wild with delight, she rushed back to camp and told of the wonder.
“A tree on the desert!” her father exclaimed. “It cannot be.”
Nor could she make him believe so strange a thing had happened until she led him to the spot. But there it stood, with head held high like an Arab sheik, and when he tasted of the fruit he found it good.
In the late afternoon of the following day the caravan of the sheik Ben Nedi came to the camp of Abi Ben Ahmed. The women within the tents received him with singing, and the men with low salaams. Then the gifts were brought: the finest camels of the herd, turban cloth enough for all the men of his train, and silk, a portion of her mother’s marriage dower worth the price of many camels. It had been brought by ship across the sea and by caravan over the desert, and was rainbow-hued and fine, such as is woven only in the Vale of Cashmere. The great man received them with gratitude, and spoke words of praise for the tribe of Ben Ahmed. “Surely nothing more splendid can be set before a sheik,” he said.