"I can bear it no longer, _effendim_. Another night out in the desert, with the cruel moon beating, beating, beating upon my brain, with creeping things coming out from the rocks, wriggling, wriggling, their many feet making whisperings in the sand--ah, it will kill me! And I am for ever outcast from my tribe, from my people. No tent of all the Arabs, though I fly to the gates of Damascus, is open to me, save I enter in shame, as a slave, as a plaything, as a toy. My heart"--furiously she beat upon her breast--"is empty and desolate, _effendim_. I am meaner than the lowliest thing that creeps upon the sand; yet the God that made that creeping thing made me also--and you, you, who are merciful and strong, would not crush any creature because it was weak and helpless." I had released her wrist now, and was looking down at her in a sort of stupor. The evil which at first I had seemed to perceive in her was effaced, wiped out as an artist wipes out an error in his drawing. Her dark beauty was speaking to me in a language of its own; a strange language, yet one so intelligible that I struggled in vain to disregard it. And her voice, her gestures, and the witch-fire of her eyes were whipping up my blood to a fever heat of passionate sorrow--of despair. Yes, incredible as it sounds, despair! In short, as I see it now, this siren of the wilderness was playing upon me as an accomplished musician might play upon a harp, striking this string and that at will, and sounding each with such full notes as they had rarely, if ever, emitted before. Most damnable anomaly of all, I--Edward Neville, archæologist, most prosy and matter-of-fact man in Cairo, perhaps--_knew_ that this nomad who had burst into my tent, upon whom I had set eyes for the first time scarce three minutes before, held me enthralled; and yet, with her wondrous eyes upon me, I could summon up no resentment, and could offer but poor resistance. "In the Little Oasis, _effendim_, I have a sister who will admit me into her household, if only as a servant. There I can be safe, there I can rest. O _Inglîsi_, at home in England you have a sister of your own! Would you see her pursued, a hunted thing from rock to rock, crouching for shelter in the lair of some jackal, stealing that she might live--and flying always, never resting, her heart leaping for fear, flying, flying, with nothing but dishonor before her?" She shuddered and clasped my left hand in both her own convulsively, pulling it down to her bosom. "There can be only one thing, _effendim_," she whispered. "Do you not see the white bones bleaching in the sun?" Throwing all my resolution into the act, I released my hand from her clasp, and, turning aside, sat down upon the box which served me as chair and table, too.