V
Dawn was breaking over the desert. Steadily the triumphant rose spread upward in the pale opalescent sky, and broad waves of light rippled slowly over the wide level plain. The little keen breeze of the morning, the herald of the dawn that runs ever in front of its chariot, stirred the branches of the palm trees by the Nile, and played a moment idly with the flap of a tent door before it passed onward. Here, some two miles away from cool Assouan, lying out in the desert, was the Bishâreen encampment, and the last small tent of the long line had its door open, and the flap of the awning loose, with which the morning wind stopped to play.
Within, seated cross-legged on the scarlet rug and sheepskin which formed their bed, were two girls braiding their hair before a tiny square of glass, which each in turn held up for the other.
"How cold the morning is! How I hate to hear the wind shake the door flaps," one said and shivered.
"Doolga, don't; you are holding the glass all crooked; I cannot see myself. Why should you feel cold this morning of all others, when Sheik Ilbrahim dar Awaz is coming to claim you?" returned the other, and she laughed softly, with her slim fingers busy trying to bind up and restrain her dusky cloud of hair.
How lovely she was, this young Bishâreen, who had looked on the yearly fall of the Nile but fifteen times—lovely as the tall slender palm of the oasis, or the gold light on the river at sunset. Tall and straight, with the stately carriage and proud head of her race; smooth and supple, with every limb faultlessly moulded under the clear, lustrous skin.
"Silka, Silka! I cannot marry the Sheik. I am in terror of him. Help me, save me!"
The little glass fell on the blanket between them. In the warm rose glow now filling the tent, Doolga's face was ashen-coloured. Awe-struck and startled Silka gazed wide-eyed upon her. For an instant the two girls sat staring in silence into each other's eyes. So much alike they were that one face seemed the reflection of the other, only there was a bloom, a light, a sweetness on Silka's that was missing in the other.
"Why?" she breathed after that first startled silence, "what is the matter, Doolga? Tell me; tell me everything."
She drew nearer her sister, and put one arm round her. The pink light from without, striking through the tent canvas, touched her face, showing its delicately-cut, exquisite features and the tender love filling the eyes.