“Ah!” she exclaimed, throwing one arm over her head, as her white, scented bosom, half-covered with flashing jewels, slowly rose and fell. “Thou didst think me dead? Perhaps it would have been better for me—better for thee—if I had really died. On the night we parted I was near indeed to death.”
“How?” I asked anxiously. “I heard thy screams, but was held powerless to return and render thee help. Tell me what occurred?”
“Strive not to penetrate secrets that are mine alone, Ce-cil,” she answered, kindly but firmly. “I can only show thee evidence of the coward’s blow;” and raising herself into a sitting posture, she tore asunder the transparent, pearl-embroidered lace which was the only covering of the upper part of her body, revealing to my astonished eyes a great ugly wound only half-healed. She had been struck in the left side, half-way between arm-pit and waist, evidently with a keen, crooked jambiyah, which had inflicted a terrible injury. The white, delicate flesh was red and inflamed around a deep wound about three inches in length, from which bandages had apparently only recently been removed.
“Who attempted thy murder?” I asked, enraged that anyone should thus strike down a defenceless woman.
“An enemy,” she answered, readjusting her filmy garments, the transparency of which caused her no concern. The gauzes of the harem had always been her attire from childhood, and she knew nothing of rigid Western conventionalities. To the fair daughters of Al-Islâm the follies and foibles of Parisian fashion are a mystery. It is the mission of the inmates of the harem to look beautiful, but they trust to their own personal attractions, not to Worth’s creations or Truefitt’s coiffures. The corsets, tailor-made gowns, and other arts that transform a hag of sixty into a “smart” Society woman, are unknown in the dreamy Courts of Love, for the velvet zouaves, the gauzy serroual, and the garments of brilliant silk brocade are practically the same from Fez to Teheran.
“Name the man who struck thee!” I cried. “He shall answer to me.”
“No, no,” she replied, turning slowly among her luxurious cushions, causing her golden anklets to jingle. “It is best that, for the present, thou shouldst not know.”
“But a dead hand, with thy rings upon its lifeless fingers, was sent to me, and I thought thou hadst—”
“Yes, yes,” she answered quickly, interrupting. “But thou mayest not know for what object the severed hand was sent thee. Forget the incident now; some day shalt thou know all.”
“When?”