“Were’t not a shame, were’t not a loss for him
  In this clay carcase, crippled, to abide?”

Well might old Omar ponder upon this.

But Zulannah had a good reason for clinging to life, in spite of the greatness of her debacle.

The metal of which had been wrought the one love that had come to her in her short life had not been able to withstand the crucible of physical pain.  For hours and days she had writhed in the agony of her physical injury, with no one to care if she suffered or starved, except the Ethiopian, who, when her senses had come back to her, had twitted her upon her failure in her love-affairs; had tormented and mocked and laughed, until a great wish for revenge had taken the place of her former love for the Englishman.  Revenge, above all things, on the girl who had been capable of inspiring love in two such men; revenge on the white man who had really been the primary cause of her downfall, but a lingering, hellish revenge, if she could only think of one, for the man who had given the order to the dogs just because she had reviled the white girl, Damaris.

So she sat on the pile of cushions, smoking the cheapest cigarette of the bazaar, whilst her cunning brain wove plots around the astounding news Qatim had just imparted.

They were perfectly free from interruption.  The door was barred and the small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the wall to allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept them safe and proved far more potent as a barrier against their neighbours’ curiosity than any spike-crowned wall.

Qatim had given out that the woman was bewitched, and that death, instantaneous and horrible, would be the fate awaiting anyone but himself who should speak to her or look upon her unveiled face before the setting of the sun—­some of us Christians refuse to walk under ladders—­and, although it entailed much fetching and carrying and marketing on his part, still, it ensured them solitude.

“And you saw him?”

She spoke with a sibilant intaking of breath, caused by the twist to her mouth.

“Yes; with a beautiful white woman—­another.  They have come from Assouan by the boat.”

“Not the girl who rode in the desert with------”

She touched the purple angry marks on her cheek.

“Nay, woman; I have told thee, she walks in the blackness of the ruins, with the man who caused thee thy hurt.  She drives with him,” he spat, “she should take thy place in the bazaar, O Zulannah of the thousand lovers.”

The woman paid no heed to the jibe.

“Who told thee?”

“Behold, the night-watchman of the big hotel upon the edge of the water sent me word.”

“Why?”

“That is no business of thine.  Tell me what scheme thou hast in thy head.  Dost desire the death of the three?”

Zulannah shook her head and turning it so that the wounds and distortion were hidden, leant against the wall.