With that she kissed his hand and her tears fell over it, but after a moment she wiped her eyes, rose to her feet, and turning briskly to the other women she said—
"Take your cakes and be off with you—I'm going to stay."
CHAPTER XIV
Three weeks longer Ishmael lay in the grip of his fever, and day and night Adila tended him, moistening his parched lips and cooling his hot forehead, while he raged against his enemies in his strong delirium, crying, "Down with the Christians! Drive them away! Kill them!" Then the thunging and roaring in his poor brain ceased, and his body was like a boat that had slid in an instant out of a stormy sea into a quiet harbour. Opening his eyes, with his face to the red wall, in the cool light of a breathless morning, he heard behind him the soft and mellow voice of a woman who seemed to be whispering to herself or to Heaven, and she was saying—
"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil; for Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory. Amen."
"What is that?" he asked, closing his eyes again, and at the next moment the mellow voice came from somewhere above his face—
"So you are better? Oh, how good that is! I am Adila. Don't you remember me?"
"What was that you were saying, my girl?"
"That? Oh, that was the prayer of the Lord Isa (Jesus)."
"The Lord Isa?"