"No, Effendi, it is not forbidden."
The total absence of the sun had made the desert seem inhospitable and dreary. The saint was too weak to protest and so he was carried to the camp. Millicent watched the slow procession with anger and amazement. She knew that Michael was rash and impetuous, but she had not given him credit for being such a fool.
While he was being put to bed in a tent, and carefully attended to, Michael tried to discover if the saint was really ill, if he was suffering from some specific malady, or if he was merely worn out with fatigue. He administered a drug to him which he hoped would soothe his nerves and allow him to sleep.
In a dog-like manner the man's tragic eyes eloquently expressed both his astonishment and gratitude. It was long since he had slept in a comfortable bed, under sheets and blankets. He rarely spoke, except to mutter or loudly chant in a half-delirious manner suras from the Koran.
When Michael had attended to his simple wants and seen to it that his servants were not only willing but eager to nurse him, he left him to their care and immediately hurried off to his own tent to change his clothes and disinfect himself as thoroughly as possible—a necessary precaution, although the man had not been as dirty as Millicent had depicted. His dilk, or Joseph's coat, was indeed tattered and his turban in the last stages of decay, but they were clean. His person was not offensive. A pathetic figure, fleshless and worn and neurotic; yet in the sands of the desert he had performed his ablutions before prayer, as prescribed by the Prophet in the Holy Book. The untrodden sands of the desert are as cleansing and purifying as the waters of Jordan.
When Michael at last returned to Millicent, she said quite gently, although her inward woman burned with anger, "Mike, are you mad or a saint? How could you touch him?"
"I'm far from being a saint!" he said.
"You are as much one as that wretched creature, who has pretended he is one for so long that he now believes he is."
"Or his Moslem brethren do, perhaps you mean!"
"Well, he acts up to their superstitious ideas."