"Why she wrote that letter?"
"Yes."
Overwhelmed with the terrible enlightenment, Ishmael fumbled his beads and muttered, "Allah! Allah!"
Then Gordon told his own story—how he, too, acting under the impulse of an awful error, had fled to the Soudan, leaving an evil name behind him rather than kill his dear ones by the revelation of what he believed to be the truth; how, finding the pit that had been dug for the innocent man, he had thought it his duty as the guilty one to step into it himself; and how, finally, being appeased on that point, he had determined to come into Cairo in Ishmael's place in order to save both him from the sure consequences of his determined fanaticism and his father from the certain ruin that must follow upon the work of liars and intriguers.
By this time Ishmael was no longer pale but pallid. His lips were trembling, his heart was beating audibly. Again without voice, almost without breath, he stammered—
"When you offered to take my place you knew that the Rani ... Helena ... had sent that letter?"
Gordon bowed without speaking.
"You knew, too, that you might be coming to your death?"
Once more Gordon bowed his head.
"Coming to your death, that I ... that I might live?"