He lifted the bottle containing the solution of arsenic. "Have not taken any of this?" He pronounced in a tone of suffocation. "Remember must never take it until Hamoud has dropped it." He set down the bottle. It fell upon its side. But alas! it did not break. "Hamoud! what has happened?" In mercy, with a violent gesture, with a sensation of sickness, he thrust the newspaper into David's hands. "Done! No chance to turn back now!" He rolled the folding doors together behind him and leaned against them, his face beaded with sweat, panting as if in escaping that room he had run a mile. He listened. How his heart thumped! He heard nothing. "Has he the courage, though? Alone with those thoughts!" Leaning against the door, through which came never a sound, Hamoud began to weep, for the man whom he had served, for her, and for himself. Yes, the Oman stock, cruel and remorseless in its pristine state, had deteriorated in the lax paradise of Zanzibar; the old impulses were there, but in abortive form; and the deed that Hamoud's forefathers would have done less indirectly, and without a twinge, aroused in Hamoud that pity which an ironist has called "the mask of weakness." Next morning, when they asked him to state his whole knowledge of the matter, he told them that as he had been about to light the fire Mr. Verne had seen, amid the brushwood, a bit of newspaper showing his name in large type. It was there, no doubt, in consequence of the servants' carelessness. "But you gave it to him," the local chief of police remarked severely. "Before I knew." Their indignation was softened by his crushed mien, and by his inflamed eyes. Having arrived at their verdict, they discussed Arabs--or, as they called them, "Ayrabs"--and one honest old fellow even paid the race a compliment, in saying: "It's said that when they like a person they will do anything for them." It was Hamoud who told her. The nurse, stealing a nap on the couch in the sitting room, did not stir as he passed into the bedchamber; but Lilla awoke at the command of his eyes. When he had finished speaking: "No!" she sighed, as the world burst into fragments, and, like the bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope, slid swiftly into a new pattern. "Ah, the poor soul! The poor soul!" She saw him more clearly, she understood him better, than in life. "All for nothing!" No, surely not all for nothing! At any rate, these were tears of convalescence. CHAPTER LII A fortnight later, as she sat in a deep chair in the living room, Hamoud presented himself in the doorway, to announce: "He is here." Parr crept into her presence.