And she was afraid.

There was absolutely no sound, save for the fall of a charred log which sounded like a pistol shot, the rustle of her raiment, which sounded like the incoming tide of some invisible sea, and the quick intake of her breath, which might have meant unadulterated terror, and—­did.

She shivered slightly, for of a sudden she saw a woman’s face in a corner unreached by the light of the lamp.  A long brown hand drew back the coarse hair, which curled and tangled under a veil, black brows frowned down on great eyes, which looked at her steadily, but the mouth, crimson as blood, parted in a smile wonderful to behold in its understanding, as Jill called softly: 

“Speak, woman! who are you?”

But when the silence remained unbroken, and the girl, rushing swiftly across the room, touched just ordinary wood, she looked quickly round for escape; then hesitating, raised her hands and clapped them softly; raised them again when the silence remained unbroken, dropped them and once more shook with terror, which was really fatigue, when a something rustled behind, being in truth the catching of her garment on the fretted edge of a table; then once more she clapped her hands as she whispered, so low that the words hardly seemed to carry beyond the firelight: 

“Hahmed!  Hahmed!”

Whereupon there was a faint rustle, the swinging to and fro of the curtain door, and the man stood before her.  Not a sound broke the stillness, not a movement caused a flicker to the name of the shaded hanging lamp, which, just above the girl’s head, threw down the light on the radiance of her hair, and the wonder of her body which the diaphanous garment half concealed and half revealed.

Not a sign on the Arab’s face, this dweller of the desert, whose forefathers in wonderment had watched the ways of wisdom with which Solomon in all his glory had ruled more than one fair and obstreperous woman among the scented Eastern sands.

Face to face they stood, whilst the racing blood fled from the girl’s face down to the finger-tips of her contradictory hands.  The hands she knew so well, the square back, the square finger-tips, the long, square, high-mooned, deeply laid nail.  Hands which, coming to her down the centuries through Quaker and through Puritan, were calling to her to stand firm and hold the scales well-balanced, whilst the soft, rounded palm, hidden in the golden fringe of her garment, and the over-sensitive finger-tips, with little nerve-filled cushions at the end of each, clamoured aloud for beauty and sweetness, tenderness and mastery, as the great man, with the beads of Allah slipping noiselessly through his fingers, reading the girl’s thoughts as though they were written on the wall, marked and watched with sombre eyes in the breathless silence of the coming dawn.

Slowly the girl raised her eyes and scanned the man, from the snow-white turban on the dark head, the softness of the silken shirt, showing through the long, open, orange satin front of the voluminous coat, which reached almost to the ankles, leaving exposed the trousers of softest white linen, fastened close above the leather shoes, whilst quite subconsciously she wondered what he would look like in European evening dress.