"Behold, she whom God has smitten, man smote first. I am her foster- brother--from the same breast we drew the food of life. Thou wouldst do justice, O Effendina; but canst thou do double justice--ay, a thousandfold? Then"--his voice raised almost shrilly--"then do it upon Achmet Pasha. She--Zaida--told me where I should find the bridge- opener." "Zaida once more!" Kaid murmured. "She had learned all in Achmet's harem--hearing speech between Achmet and the man whom thou didst deliver to my hands yesterday." "Zaida-in Achmet's harem?" Kaid turned upon her. Swiftly she told her dreadful tale, how, after Achmet had murdered all of her except her body, she rose up to kill herself; but fainting, fell upon a burning brazier, and her hand thrust accidentally in the live coals felt no pain. "And behold, O my lord, I knew I was a leper; and I remembered my sister and lived on." So she ended, in a voice numbed and tuneless. Kaid trembled with rage, and he cried in a loud voice: "Bring Achmet forth." As the slave sped upon the errand, David laid a hand on Kaid's arm, and whispered to him earnestly. Kaid's savage frown cleared away, and his rage calmed down; but an inflexible look came into his face, a look which petrified the ruined Achmet as he salaamed before him. "Know thy punishment, son of a dog with a dog's heart, and prepare for a daily death," said Kaid. "This woman thou didst so foully wrong, even when thou didst wrong her, she was a leper." A low cry broke from Achmet, for now when death came he must go unclean to the after-world, forbidden Allah's presence. Broken and abject he listened. "She knew not, till thou wert gone," continued Kaid. She is innocent before the law. But thou--beast of the slime--hear thy sentence. There is in the far desert a place where lepers live. There, once a year, one caravan comes, and, at the outskirts of the place unclean, leaves food and needful things for another year, and returns again to Egypt after many days. From that place there is no escape--the desert is as the sea, and upon that sea there is no ghiassa to sail to a farther shore. It is the leper land. Thither thou shalt go to wait upon this woman thou hast savagely wronged, and upon her kind, till thou diest. It shall be so." "Mercy! Mercy!" Achmet cried, horror-stricken, and turned to David. "Thou art merciful. Speak for me, Saadat." "When didst thou have mercy?" asked David. "Thy crimes are against humanity." Kaid made a motion, and, with dragging feet, Achmet passed from the haunts of familiar faces. For a moment Kaid stood and looked at Zaida, rigid and stricken in that awful isolation which is the leper's doom. Her eyes were closed, but her head was high. "Wilt thou not die?" Kaid asked her gently.