For Love of a Bedouin Maid

by Voleur

Of the two, Halima was the first to awake to consciousness and, with it, to the memory of her love for St. Just and of all she had lost in losing him. Buonaparte she had never loved; his apparent devotion to her had but flattered her woman's pride and love of power; and now, even he had deserted her; for months she had not seen him. She could have survived this, but for St. Just's return; but the sight of him had fanned into a glowing flame the smoldering ashes of her love, that had never quite died out. And now he, too, had left her. Life was no longer possible to her, and she would end it.

Imbued with this resolve, she sprang from her seat and rushed to a table close at hand, on which lay a sharp-pointed, narrow-bladed little dagger, with jeweled haft, a mere toy, it looked, but it had the potentiality of dealing death. Distraught with the agony of a hopeless love, she seized the glittering weapon, and raised her arm, intent on plunging the dagger to the hilt into her palpitating bosom. Then, with a longing to take one last look on the place in which so many heart-stirring incidents had occurred, she moved across the room and threw open the latticed window.

She gazed on the well-remembered scene, noticing each familiar shrub, each well-known object, a pigeon circling overhead in the blue expanse, a tall pinnacle of the citadel, just visible above the wall. Then her eye fell upon the fountain—what was that lying motionless beside it? A man! In an instant she had recognized the well-loved form; it was St. Just!

She swayed and felt as if about to faint again; then clutched at the window for support.

"Dead!" she moaned; "killed by me. By his side I will breathe out my life; my dying lips shall be pressed to his in one last fond kiss, and I will whisper in his ears—though he will hear me not—that I never loved but him, for all I was so weak as to yield myself to the embraces of another."

Still grasping the dagger, she rushed, like one demented, from the room, down the staircase and into the courtyard. Then, with a low cry, she flew to her lover's side and, throwing herself upon her knees, she wound one arm around his neck and kissed him passionately.

"Oh, my darling," she wailed, "I loved you so—ah, more than you ever guessed—and I have lost you! But though in life I cannot be yours, in death I will not be parted from you. At least, we can lie together in one grave. Sleep on in peace, my loved one, your Halima is coming to you. One last kiss on those dear lips, and then—!"

She pressed her face to his in one long devouring kiss—a kiss that typified her whole being's passion; a kiss in which she seemed to breathe out her very soul.

Then she bared her heaving bosom and raised her arm to strike.

And he? Whether it was that, even in unconsciousness, the impassioned outpouring of her soul struck a responsive chord in his; or that the pressure of her soft arm round his neck and the hot kisses she showered upon his face put warmth into his body and quickened the sluggish action of his heart; or that both these causes combined to bring about what happened; certain it is that, at the moment when the despairing girl was about to end her life, he sighed profoundly and woke up from his swoon; then turned his eyes on her. In a moment he had grasped what she was about to do, had seized her uplifted arm, wrenched the knife from her and flung it into the basin of the fountain.