Freeing herself gently, she moved towards the fire, trailing the golden raiment after her so that it pulled against the beauty of her body.  For a moment she stood unconsciously silhouetted against the wall, virginal in her whiteness and her slimness, and yet, in her build alone, giving such promise of greater beauty, in the maturity of love.

Slowly, whilst her mind worked, she traced the blue vein from her wrist up her forearm, up until the finger stopped suddenly, upon a tiny mark tattooed just above the elbow.

A faint shadow of incomprehension swept across the man’s face, for from nowhere, in one brief instant, a little wind, laden with straying particles of fear, distrust and memories, swept between the two, as the girl’s voice, biting in its coldness, searing great scars upon the Arab’s raging, storming, totally hidden pride, let fall slowly, cruelly, light-spoken, mocking words of French.

“Please tell me my woman’s name, so that I may call her, for I would disrobe, being overcome by a great desire to—­sleep!”

[1]Moles are considered a great beauty among the Egyptian races.

CHAPTER XXV

The sun in a great red-gold ball was slipping behind the sharp edge of sand which like a steel wire marked the far horizon, the sky resembling some gorgeous Eastern mantle stretched red and orange and purple from the West, fastened by one enormous scintillating diamond star to the pink, grey, fawn and faintest heliotrope shroud which the dying day was wrapping around her in the East.

Terrific had been the heat throughout the month, wilting the palms, drawing iridescent vapours from the diminished stream, making the very sand too hot even for native feet.

The green reed blinds sheltering the great balcony room, and over which, in the heat of the day, trickled a continuous stream of water, were drawn up to allow the sunset breeze to pass right through the long two-storeyed building which, the essence of coolness, comfort, and beauty, in the past months by the efforts of countless skilled workmen, hailing from every conceivable corner of Asia and Egypt, and regardless of expense and labour, had been built for one beautiful English girl, who, in a moment of ever regretted contrariness, had refused to participate in the planning and devising of the work, thereby shutting herself off from that most fascinating pastime, house-building; leaving everything down to the minutest details to the imagination, ingenuity, and inventive genius of the Arab.  For months she had listened to the monotonous chant of the men at work, the tap of hammer, swish of saw, and dull thud of machinery, and also to the grunting and grumbling of the camels who, in great caravans from every point of the compass, had complainingly brought their burdens of riches.

The groves of great date palms around her temporary abode had prevented her from seeing the outcome of all the noise, her misplaced pride or temper, or whatever you will, likewise preventing her from inquiring as to the progress made from the Arab, who, at her bidding, would come and sit with her, talking gravely upon absolutely indifferent subjects, neither showing by word or gesture if she were any more to him than the rug beneath his feet.