“Fear and hope have sent me mad,” I said. “Sweet, sweetest, dry those tears—let me kiss them away—smile again; thou art the sun that lights my world. Think! I have dreamed of thee as winter dreams of spring! Think, my love and thine idea have grown like leaf and flower.”
At last, with supreme effort, she stifled her sobs and dried her eyes, remaining in silence and murmuring now and then fervent blessings upon me. For some moments the quiet had been unbroken, when, like a funeral wail, the sound of distant voices came up through the lattice, followed by the dismal howling of a hundred dogs.
“Hearken!” she gasped in sudden fear, disengaging herself from my embrace, as, dashing across to the window, she drew the hangings quickly aside, admitting the morning sun. “The mueddin have announced the sunrise! Already hast thou tarried too long. It is imperative that thou shouldst fly, lest our plans be thwarted by thine arrest. Fly! Remember what the Korân saith. Whatever is in heaven and earth singeth praise unto Allah; and he is mighty and wise. He is the first and the last, the manifest and the hidden; and he knoweth all things. He is with thee wheresoever thou art; for Allah seeth that which thou doest.”
I placed my arms about her and again clasped her to my breast in final embrace, uttering a passionate declaration of love, and drinking her whole soul through her lips as sunlight drinks the dew. Her great beauty intoxicated me; I stood in an invincible torpor as if I had partaken of some strange potion. How long we remained thus I know not, but at length an alarming sound caused us both to listen breathlessly.
Next second the voices of men, loud and deep, greeted our startled ears as the curtains concealing the door by which I had entered stirred, as if some persons were there concealed.
“May Allah have mercy!” gasped the woman I loved, her face blanched to the lips. “The eunuchs are making their first round. Thou art lost—lost. And I am doomed to die!”
Then I knew that a fatality encompassed me.