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Page 92
Damaris, with all the smart of the wound to her pride revived, had shaken
her head.
"I want you--I want you--to------"
Hugh Carden Ali understood by the grace of intuition.
"We will start for Khargegh to-morrow," he continued after a little
pause. "And at the same time--if it will please thee, with thy
consent--I will send my swiftest runner to Luxor, where he will despatch
by cable the news of--oh! my beloved!--of our engagement--Allah! what a
word to describe the opening of the gates of Paradise--to all the great
cities of my country and of thy country. Have I thy consent?"
Incapable of speech, Damaris nodded; having cast the die, she trembled
like a leaf; and at the sight of her, white, with big, frightened eyes
staring at him and teeth driven into her lip, he took her in his arms.
"Thou art mine, beloved, mine as thou hast been in all the past, as thou
wilt be in all the ages to come. All mine, thy heart, thy soul, thy
body. I ask to gather no pebble from the path nor flower from the tree;
I will have the jewelled necklace of thy beauty to hang above my heart,
and the grove of thy sweetness in which to take my rest. I love thee,
and for the agony of the hours passed in the ruined temples I will take
my reward. I love thee, love thee, love thee!"
She made no sound when he bent and kissed her hair, but in the glory of
the love which is that of youth, which is as a bud at dawn, the full
flower at noon and a few petals at dusk, and of which the fragrance stays
with you down all the ages, she raised her face so that he kissed her on
the mouth.
And he kissed her closed eyes and the pillar of her throat and the
whiteness of her shoulders, and her crimson mouth again and yet again, in
the wonder of this, his hour of life, granted him by Allah who is God;
and then raised his head and stared out across the desert.
From a great distance there came to him the drumming of a horse's hoofs
upon the sand.
CHAPTER XXX
"_The true, strong, and sound mind is the mind
that can embrace equally great things and small._"
SAMUEL JOHNSON.
The two wise women had long since left Khargegh.
By special train, by special boat, by aid of runners, telephone and
telegraph, but above all by the magic of the Sheikh el-Umbar's name and
his wife's unlimited distribution of gold, Olivia Duchess of Longacres
and her maid and Jill el-Umbar and her maid arrived at the hotel on the
night of the full moon.
They would have arrived before sunset if it had not been for the
mistake made about the special steamer which had kept them waiting at
the quay; they would not have arrived until twenty-four hours later if
they had made use of the ordinary train and boat.
"Can't we go faster, ma'am? Can't we get there quicker?"
It was Maria Hobson, stolid, solid, dour, big-hearted woman with a
streak of Scotch blood in her veins, who worried outwardly. If you had
watched her out of the corner of your eye you would have seen her shake
her fist at the desert; if you had walked behind her on the quay you
would have heard her say, with a world of entreaty in her voice, to
some terrified, non-understanding _fellah_ who quaked at the knee:
"Can't you get a move on, somehow? You're only a heathen, to be sure,
but if you'd heard the tone in the young lady's voice you'd do
something instead of sal-aaming."
She said very little to her beloved mistress, but to Jill she poured
out her heart, and Jill who with the intuition of a mother's love had
connected the dream with her son let her repeat her tale over and over
again.
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