"You say I am your enemy, your father's enemy. Believe me, Masa, I am not your enemy, not your father's enemy. An evil destiny has ordained that Mohammed Ali should be the instrument, the sword of justice, that he should grieve and wound her he would so gladly shield. The evil ghins have also ordained that I should carry out the law and assume a threatening attitude toward your father. I must submit to what Allah ordains, and proceed in the line of my duty. But, Masa, you shall know that I am neither yours nor your father's enemy. You must know that I would shed my heart's blood to make undone that which I have commenced. O Masa, had I sooner beheld these eyes, that now look upon me with the brilliancy of the stars in heaven, had I sooner beheld the countenance that now beams upon me with the brightness of the young day, never would my mother's son have assumed a threatening attitude toward your father, never would Mohammed have undertaken to enforce the law against him. True, the evil ghins have brought this about, but hearken to me, Masa, and consider well that your father's welfare is at stake." "I will not hear you," said she, tremblingly. " I swear, by the spirit of my mother, that I have nothing to conceal before Allah and the prophet. Do not wound me, Masa, with your alarm. You seemed to me this morning the loveliest of women; until then Sitta Khadra was her son's only love. You must know that when she had died, Mohammed Ali fled into solitude and intended to take his own life. But in the solitude, Allah said to him: 'The life I have given you, bear with manfully, and take upon yourself the sufferings I see fit to visit upon you.' "I bowed submissively to his commands; I left my solitude and raised myself by my sorrow as by a pillar. But in you I seemed to see my mother's spirit; then pain vanished from my heart, and my mother seemed to be regarding me through your eyes. Therefore, Masa, have I followed you. I have come to say that which brings the blush to my inmost soul, that which the ear of no other human being shall ever hear. In the name of my mother, I beseech you, do not let it be here upon this open path where men may pass, and which the foot of man has desecrated. In the name of the mother you love so well as you this morning declared in the mosque, and in the name of my mother whom I have loved as few sons have loved their mothers, in the name of the moon, and in the name of the golden stars that glitter above us, I entreat you, mount with me to the summit of the rock. There will Mohammed speak words to you that his tongue has never uttered before. There he will advise you how to save your father, and help the men of Praousta." She looked up to the crest of the rock, bathed in the soft moonlight. "You would lead me up there?" murmured she.