“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 Bishareen, 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.

“I hate the Sheik!” sobbed Doolga, putting down her head on the other’s soft bare shoulder; “I don’t want him.  I love him!”

And Silka felt that everything indeed was told.  The incoherent, inexplicable words were clear enough to her.  She trembled all over, and the two girls clung together in the little tent, while the noise of a large encampment awakening grew about them outside.

Suddenly Doolga grew calm; she lifted her face, and Silka saw it was grey, with great lines of anguish cut in it, and her heart seemed to contract with pain, for she loved Doolga better than anything she knew in the world, and Doolga’s suffering was her suffering.

“I thought, father thought you would be glad to marry the Sheik,” she faltered.

“I cannot.  I will throw myself into the Nile rather; Silka, help me!”

“How can I?”

“You marry the Sheik!” Doolga’s eyes were alight with flame.  Something of the tiger’s glare shone in them.  She bent forward and seized the other girl’s wrists in a feverish grip.  The clasp hurt and burnt like fire.  Silka drew back instinctively, paling with surprise.

“I marry the Sheik?” she repeated, “but—­”

“Yes, you must!  Oh, Silka, you have always loved me:  save me now.  I cannot.  It will be death to me.  I love—­I love—­” she hesitated; then added, “so much.  You love no one.  Why not then the Sheik?  Do this for me.  I will think of you, bless you always.  Save me from death; save me from the Nile!”