breast.

"Thou art my love, Mahommed Selim," she said. He raised his head from
his hands, a hunger of desire in his face.

"Thou art my lord," she added: "art thou not forgiven? The little one is
thine and mine," she whispered. "Wilt thou not speak to him?"

"Lest Allah should strike me with blindness and dry up the juice of my
veins, I will not touch thee or the child until all be righted. Food
will I not eat, nor water drink until thou art mine--by the law of the
Prophet, mine."

Laying down the water-jar, and the plate of dourha bread, old Fatima
gathered her robe about her, and cried as she ran from the house:
"Marriage and fantasia thou shalt have this hour."

The stiffness seemed to pass from her bones as she ran through the
village to the house of the Omdah. Her voice, lifting shrilly, sang the
Song of Haleel, the song of the newly married, till it met the chant of
the Muezzin on the tower of the mosque El Hassan, and mingled with it,
dying away over the fields of bersim and the swift-flowing Nile.

That night Mahommed Selim and Soada the daughter of Wassef the
camel-driver were married, but the only fantasia they held was their own
low laughter over the child. In the village, however, people were little
moved to smile, for they knew that Mahommed Selim was a deserter from
the army of the Khedive at Dongola, and that meant death. But no one
told Soada this, and she did not think; she was content to rest in the
fleeting dream.

"Give them twenty-four hours," said the black-visaged fat sergeant of
cavalry come to arrest Mahommed Selim for desertion.

The father of Mahommed Selim again offered the Mamour a feddan of
land if the young man might go free, and to the sergeant he offered a
she-camel and a buffalo. To no purpose. It was Mahommed Selim himself
who saved his father's goods to him. He sent this word to the sergeant
by Yusef the drunken ghaffir: "Give me to another sunset and sunrise,
and what I have is thine--three black donkeys of Assiout rented to old
Abdullah the sarraf."

Because with this offer he should not only have backsheesh but the
man also, the fat sergeant gave him leave. When the time was up, and
Mahommed Selim drew Soada's face to his breast, he knew that it was the
last look and last embrace.

"I am going back," he said; "my place is empty at Dongola."

"No, no, thou shalt not go," she cried. "See how the little one loves
thee," she urged, and, sobbing, she held the child up to hi