His people at the tent's mouth were muttering among themselves. He dismissed them, sending everybody away including the boy and the Arab woman. Most of them went off grudgingly, ungraciously, for the first time reluctant to obey his will.
Then he closed up the mouth of the tent, and was once more alone with Helena.
CHAPTER IV
In spite of the dread with which, for more than a month, Helena had looked forward to the hour in which Ishmael should hear of his betrayal, she felt none of the terror from that cause which she had feared and expected.
She could think of nothing but Gordon. Where was he now? What were they doing to him? It seemed to be the only possible explanation of his arrest that his scheme for the salvation of the people had failed. Would he be handed over to the military authorities? Would he be tried by court-martial? And what would be the punishment of his offences as a soldier? Sinking down on the angerib she pressed her hands over her brow and over her eyes that she might think of this and shut out everything else.
Meantime the mind of Ishmael was going through a conflict as strange and no less cruel. Although the plain evidences of his senses had already told him that he had been betrayed by the woman he loved, yet the dread of discovering the traitor in his own tent, in his own wife, filled him with terror, and he tried to escape from it.
Having fastened up the tent, he walked to and fro for some moments without speaking, and then sitting down by Helena's side and taking her hand and smoothing it, he said, in his throbbing, quivering voice—
"Rani, we have eaten bread and salt together. Be faithful with me—what woman sent that letter?"
Helena hardly heard what he was saying. She was still thinking of Gordon. "They will condemn him to death," she told herself.
"Rani," said Ishmael again, "we have lived under the same roof; you have shared with me the closest secrets of my soul. Tell me—what woman sent that letter?"