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She saw the burnished gold of the plain and the luminous sky, and between these two a figure that stood by a low brown tent, with the sunlight falling full on its noble brow and the straight profile turned towards them. Doolga wrung Silka's hand, that she still clutched, as they knelt side by side on the sheepskin looking through the eyelet.
"If I do this for you if I save you if I show myself to the Sheik, then you must let me go to the palm-grove to-night." Doolga fell back from her, surprise and terror and horror mingling in her face. She clasped her small, soft hands together and wrung them. "Oh, Silka! you know, if he sees you, he will not look at me again; he will not care." Silka smiled a slow, painful smile.
"Then you must always remember me as you see me now. However Doolga looks to you in the future, always remember this night, and how you loved her then."
So much alike they were that one face seemed the reflection of the other, only there was a bloom, a light, a sweetness on Silka's that was missing in the other. "Why?" she breathed after that first startled silence, "what is the matter, Doolga? Tell me; tell me everything." She drew nearer her sister, and put one arm round her.
"Have his riches any weight with you, Doolga? Why do you offer them to me?" she said proudly. "Because you are free: you do not love," impetuously returned the other with glib, persistent vehemence. "I would marry the Sheik, I would prize his flocks, his riches; but I love I love I cannot!" "Whom do you love so much?" replied Silka sadly. "Why have you not told me? Who is he?"
How wonderful he was with his fine head set on that long, firm throat, and how sweet the face when his beautiful mouth broke into smiles as he saw her! "Doolga!" he exclaimed, and then paused. She heard the little note of wonder, of joy, in his voice, as she looked up at him in the soft starlight, filtered through the palms.
"Yes, that is he; that is Melun," answered Doolga softly. "Is he not handsome, wonderful? Why do you stare so? Might not any girl love him?" A little smile played round Silka's lips. "Yes, indeed, any girl might love him," she answered. "But not as I do no, never! Oh, Silka, I cannot tell you how I love him. More than the Nile, more than the stars, more than we have ever loved each other!
When Doolga returned with the flush of warmth on her cheek and the jar full of shimmering water on her shoulder, Silka was sitting upright on the bed with dry, wide eyes. One glance at her told Doolga that she herself was free, that the other would take up her burden and bear it for her. She crossed over with a quick beautiful movement, lithe, free, untamed.
"But," he answered finally, "why should you not go to the Sheik now for two camels and by and by another will come for your sister and give four camels. Then shall I have had six for the two of you." "But she may die," objected the ready Doolga, the keen-witted daughter of her father. "Better secure the camels now, father."
"True, she may die, and the bargain be lost," mused the father, and at last he spread out his hands with a gesture of conclusion. "It is for the Sheik to decide," he said merely, and Doolga was content. She knew beforehand what the Sheik would decide when he saw her sister.
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