Page:Marion Crawford - Khaled.djvu/77

 truth. If it were a treasure, or anything that can be taken, you could take it, and I could help you. But if the possibility of possessing it lie not in deeds, it lies in thoughts, and is itself a thought. If you can teach me, I will think what you will; but if you cannot teach me, who shall? And how will it profit you to take my life or your own?'

'Is it possible that love is only a thought?' asked Khaled, speaking rather to himself than to her.

'It must be,' she answered. 'The body is what it is in the eyes of others, but the soul is what it thinks itself to be, happy or unhappy, loving or not loving.'

'You are too subtle for me, Zehowah,' Khaled said. 'Yet I know that this is not all true.'

For he knew that he possessed no soul, and yet he loved her. Moreover he could think himself happy or unhappy.

'You are too subtle,' he repeated. 'I will take my sword again and I will go out and fight, and pursue the enemy and. waste their country, for it is not so hard to cut through steel as to touch the heart of a woman who does not love, and it is easier to tear down towers and strongholds of stone with the naked hands than to build a temple upon the moving sand of an empty heart.'

Khaled would have risen at once, but Zehowah took his hand and entreated him to stay with her.

'Will you go out in the heat of the day, wounded