child stirs within me.
I am covered in shame in that I doubted. I am bowed down with shame
and yet lifted up to the heavens with joy."

For long minutes thus knelt she alone with her happiness, and then she
raised herself whilst a great sob shook her from head to foot.

"Hahmed," she cried as she flung her arms out wide, "Hahmed, wherever
thou art I am calling thee. Hahmed, Hahmed!" and fell face downward
unconscious upon the sand covered floor.

Noiselessly an Arab stepped from behind a pillar, crossing to the still
figure on the ground, and gently he picked her up in his arms, covering
her in the folds of his great white cloak.

"Little bird! little bird!" he whispered in the beautiful Arabian
tongue, "why willst thou beat thy tender wings against the bars of
happiness around thy dwelling? And thou wert frightened--frightened by
yon peasant woman. What said she, my dove, to strike thee senseless to
the ground?

"Thou art pale, O! my heart's delight, and weigh but as a handful of
down upon my arm, and yet must thou learn thy lesson, to the end; and
even will I forsake thee, leaving thee guided by the star of happiness
to find thy way alone to thy dwelling in the desert. Yea! there will I
await thee, O! my beloved--beloved!"

And Hahmed passed swiftly through the hall of shadows, and down the
fields of waving corn and sweet scented bean to the banks of the Nile,
and there he placed his sweet burden in the arms of the faithful native
woman, who tenderly wiped the sand from the golden curls and raised her
right hand in fealty to her master as he turned away, neither did she
falter in her tale to Mary and Jack when, goaded by anxiety and in
spite of the heat, they ran down towards the boat.

"Sunstroke!" said Mary, who had a certificate for first-aid, and
speaking with the certain flat determination which even her best
friends found most trying at times. "You simply _cannot_ go about in
Egypt without a green-lined umbrella. Yes! it's a slight, quite slight
attack of sunstroke," she continued, without noticing the radiance of
Jill's eyes, "and I will apply this damp handkerchief to your medulla
oblongata."

CHAPTER XLIX

Jill sat on the edge of her bed in an hotel at Suez.

That she was absolutely alone in Egypt, and ought not to have been
alone, never entered her head once, as she gazed through the open
window towards the sea.

Her eyes shone like stars, her mouth was a beautiful sign of content