Page:Marion Crawford - Khaled.djvu/256

 'I know it,' he answered, calmly looking up to her face. 'It needed not that you should tell me.'

'Will you not let me stay with you now?' asked Zehowah.

'Why should you stay here?' he asked with a pretence of indifference. 'Of what use are you to me? Take this sword. Can you strike with it? Your wrist is feeble. Or take a bow from the weapons on the wall. Can you draw the string? Your strength is sufficient for the lute, and your skill for scratching the strings of the barbat. Go and save yourself. I am alone and every man's hand is against me.'

Zehowah stood still in the room and hesitated, looking into his eyes for something which she all at once desired with a hot thirst. At last she spoke in an uncertain voice.

'Yet you said not long since that if I were such as you once hoped, you would bid me remain.'

'I do not care,' he answered. 'Yet for your own sake, I advise you to go away.'

'For my own sake!' she repeated, trying to speak scornfully, and turning to go a second time.

But she did not reach the door. She stood still before the weapons which hung upon the wall, and paused a moment and then took a sword from its place. Khaled watched her. She grasped the hilt as