“The watchmen that went about the city found
me; they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers
of the wall took away my veil from me.”

SONG OF SOLOMON.

The night before Ben Kelham’s return to Cairo, Zulannah sat on a pile of cushions, with her back to the crumbling plaster wall, in the filthy, smoke-filled hovel.

She had completely recovered, and save for the excruciating pain caused by the shrunken muscles when she moved, was as sound as a bell, and likely to live to a ripe old age, slave to her whilom servant, who sat on his heels, inhaling the fumes of the jewel-encrusted nargileh which his heart had always coveted.

It is useless writing about the hell through which the woman had lived from the moment she had returned to consciousness. Besides, there are some things which words cannot describe, and which in any case are best left alone, not even to the imagination.

She was absolutely in the power of the negroid brute. With the destruction of her beauty she had lost everything save what she had in the bank, and from the ever-growing heaps of little canvas bags in a corner and little piles of banknotes under the straw, she knew that some day that, too, must come to an end.

She had loved her jewels, loved the shimmering pearls and sparkling diamonds, and had found her greatest joy in dipping her hand into a leather bag filled with unset stones. How often had she sat in the luxury of her bedroom, revelling in the trickle of the rubies, sapphires and emeralds from between her fingers into her lap.

Even those she had lost.

The Milner safe stood open, showing empty shelves, and she shuddered yet at the memory of the frightful scene which had followed her refusal to open it.

She loved jewels; wanted them for their beauty; had fought the negro for them; but there was one thing she clung to even more, and that was life, so that when the huge hands had slowly, so very slowly pressed upon her neck, she had given in and setting the combination, had swung the door slowly back.

And Qatim, grey-green with fright, thinking that it had been worked by the power of a djinn or devil, had flung her out into the night, and having scraped a hole in the foetid earth under the straw, with fervent prayers to whatever he worshipped, had withdrawn the jewels, hidden them, and called the woman back.

Yes! she clung to life. Strange is it how we do, even when youth and beauty and health have passed from us. How, crippled and unlovely, twisted of temper or limb, with failing senses, in bath-chair, or propped on sticks, we hang on to the last thread, when surely we ought to be so thankful to snap it and be away to whatever our lives here have prepared for us over the border.

“Were’t not a shame, were’t not a loss for him
In this clay carcase, crippled, to abide?”

Well might old Omar ponder upon this.

But Zulannah had a good reason for clinging to life, in spite of the greatness of her debacle.

The metal of which had been wrought the one love that had come to her in her short life had not been able to withstand the crucible of physical pain. For hours and days she had writhed in the agony of her physical injury, with no one to care if she suffered or starved, except the Ethiopian, who, when her senses had come back to her, had twitted her upon her failure in her love-affairs; had tormented and mocked and laughed, until a great wish for revenge had taken the place of her former love for the Englishman. Revenge, above all things, on the girl who had been capable of inspiring love in two such men; revenge on the white man who had really been the primary cause of her downfall, but a lingering, hellish revenge, if she could only think of one, for the man who had given the order to the dogs just because she had reviled the white girl, Damaris.

So she sat on the pile of cushions, smoking the cheapest cigarette of the bazaar, whilst her cunning brain wove plots around the astounding news Qatim had just imparted.

They were perfectly free from interruption. The door was barred and the small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the wall to allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept them safe and proved far more potent as a barrier against their neighbours’ curiosity than any spike-crowned wall.

Qatim had given out that the woman was bewitched, and that death, instantaneous and horrible, would be the fate awaiting anyone but himself who should speak to her or look upon her unveiled face before the setting of the sun-some of us Christians refuse to walk under ladders-and, although it entailed much fetching and carrying and marketing on his part, still, it ensured them solitude.

“And you saw him?”

She spoke with a sibilant intaking of breath, caused by the twist to her mouth.

“Yes; with a beautiful white woman-another. They have come from Assouan by the boat.”

She touched the purple angry marks on her cheek.

“Nay, woman; I have told thee, she walks in the blackness of the ruins, with the man who caused thee thy hurt. She drives with him,” he spat, “she should take thy place in the bazaar, O Zulannah of the thousand lovers.”

The woman paid no heed to the jibe.

“Who told thee?”

“Behold, the night-watchman of the big hotel upon the edge of the water sent me word.”

“Why?”

“That is no business of thine. Tell me what scheme thou hast in thy head. Dost desire the death of the three?”

Zulannah shook her head and turning it so that the wounds and distortion were hidden, leant against the wall.

“Not yet!” she said, loosening with filthy hand the uncombed masses of jet-black hair, which still retained something of the perfume of better days. “Not yet! Let me think awhile.”

And she paid no heed to the man, who sat staring at her, breathing heavily.

The right side of her face, untouched and perfect, showed in all its beauty against the dirty whiteness of the wall; her hair served as a mantle to the perfect figure in the soiled satin wrap; her crippled limbs showed not at all in the foul room lit by a wick floating in a saucer of oil.

The light went out suddenly.

Oh, Zulannah! surely your cap of misery was full to the brim!