pair. "O my cousin, if thou knewest how I suffer, how I dread what
lies before me, thou wouldst in mercy change thy plans even now. Thou
wouldst go the short way to the end of our journey. Think of the
difference to me! A week or eight days of travel at most, instead of
three weeks, or more if I falter by the way, and thou art forced to
wait."

Maieddine's face hardened under her imploring eyes, but he answered with
gentleness, "Thou knowest, my kind friend and cousin, that I would give
my blood to save thee suffering, but it is more than my blood that thou
askest now. It is my heart, for my heart is in this journey and what I
hope from it, as I told thee yesterday. We discussed it all, thou and I,
between us. Thou hast loved, and I made thee understand something of
what I feel for this girl, whose beauty, as thou hast seen, is that of
the houris in Paradise. Never have I found her like; and it may be I
care more because of the obstacles which stand high as a wall between me
and her. Because of the man who is her sister's husband, I must not fail
in respect, or even seem to fail. I cannot take her and ride away, as I
might with a maiden humbly placed, trusting to make her happy after she
was mine. My winning must be done first, as is the way of the Roumis,
and she will be hard to win. Already she feels that one of my race has
stolen and hidden her sister; for this, in her heart, she fears and half
distrusts all Arabs. A week would give me no time to capture her love,
and when the journey is over it will be too late. Then, at best, I can
see little of her, even if she be allowed to keep something of her
European freedom. It is from this journey together--the long, long
journey--that I hope everything. No pains shall be spared. No luxury
shall she lack even on the hardest stretches of the way. She shall know
that she owes all to my thought and care. In three weeks I can pull down
that high wall between us. She will have learned to depend on me, to
need me, to long for me when I am out of her sight, as the gazelle longs
for a fountain of sweet water."

"Poet and dreamer thou hast become, Maieddine," said Lella M'Barka with
a tired smile.

"I have become a lover. That means both and more. My heart is set on
success with this girl: and yesterday thou didst promise to help. In
return, I offered thee a present that is like the gift of new life to a
woman, the amulet my father's dead brother rubbed on the sacred Black
Stone