Page:Ben-Hur a tale of the Christ.djvu/104

Rh salt. On one end of the platter there was a silver goblet full of wine, on the other a brazen hand-lamp lighted.

The room was then revealed: its walls smoothly plastered; the ceiling broken by great oaken rafters, brown with rain-stains and time; the floor of small diamond-shaped white and blue tiles, very firm and enduring; a few stools with legs carved in imitation of the legs of lions; a divan raised a little above the floor, trimmed with blue cloth, and partially covered by an immense striped woollen blanket or shawl—in brief, a Hebrew bedroom.

The same light also gave the woman to view. Drawing a stool to the divan, she placed the platter upon it, then knelt close by ready to serve him. Her face was that of a woman of fifty, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and at the moment softened by a look of tenderness almost maternal. A white turban covered her head, leaving the lobes of the ear exposed, and in them the sign that settled her condition—an orifice bored by a thick awl. She was a slave, of Egyptian origin, to whom not even the sacred fiftieth year could have brought freedom; nor would she have accepted it, for the boy she was attending was her life. She had nursed him through babyhood, tended him as a child, and could not break the service. To her love he could never be a man.

He spoke but once during the meal.

&quot;You remember, my Amrah,&quot; he said, &quot;the Messala who used to visit me here days at a time.&quot;

&quot;I remember him.&quot;

&quot;He went to Rome some years ago, and is now back. I called upon him to-day.&quot;

A shudder of disgust seized the lad.

&quot;I knew something had happened,&quot; she said, deeply interested. &quot;I never liked the Messala. Tell me all.&quot;

But he fell into musing, and to her repeated inquiries only said, &quot;He is much changed, and I shall have nothing more to do with him.&quot;

When Amrah took the platter away, he also went out, and up from the terrace to the roof.

The reader is presumed to know somewhat of the uses of the house-top in the East. In the matter of customs,