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It seemed to him that she had not answered it, but merely sighed aloud her own thanksgiving. "She loves him!" thought Iskender, with a flush of sympathy. He found strange rapture in the knowledge of her passion for the fair Emîr, in the prospect of a union of those two whom he had loved most of all people in his former life. They seemed in a sense his creatures, and their love his handiwork.
From here he was to start the next day with the rear-guard of the Tartar army. A house had been arranged for him in which to pass the night. At sunrise horse and foot soldiers were to proceed to Tomsk, where the Emir wished to receive them with the pomp usual to Asiatic sovereigns.
The hermit paused by his side, and looked down on him. "He sleeps," he said, "in darkness, and must not be awakened." The attitude of the Emir did indeed convey the idea of profound repose. One arm, flung across his body, as he lay with his face half turned to the wall, concealed, with its loose and long sleeve, the greater part of his face; but the high forehead was yet visible.
Here were to be read the strength and danger of the Mahdi movement; here in these convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic, red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their own hands might be bloody when they met it. "Have the prisoners embraced the true faith?" asked the Emir Abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes.
He also gave them all the gold he had, and took his leave of them. When emir Giendar parted from the princes, he passed through the wood where Amgrad had killed the lion, in whose blood he dipped their clothes; which having done, he proceeded on his way to the capital city of the isle of Ebene. On his arrival, king Camaralzaman asked him if he had done what he ordered?
Both he and the Sheik were invited to the meal. Both looked startled and shocked at the entrance of the fair- haired damsel, and the Sheik crouched in a corner, with a savage glare in his eye like a freshly caught wild beast, though the Emir sat cross-legged on the couch eating, and talking in the LINGUA FRANCA, which was almost a native tongue, to the son and daughter of the Crusader.
Emir and Dervish, officer and soldier, friend and foe, kneel alike to this god of ancient Egypt and draw each day their daily water in goatskin or canteen. Without the river none would have started. Without it none might have continued. Without it none could ever have returned.
As none of the three could understand Arabic, the order of the Emir would have been unintelligible to them had it not been for the conduct of Mansoor. The unfortunate dragoman, after all his treachery and all his subservience and apostasy, found his worst fears realised when the Dervish leader gave his curt command.
None but men of colored race had been around her in all her wars, her governings, and her diplomacies; and always she had been too proud to mate with them. But here now stood before her a male of her own race, handsome, upstanding, and obviously impressed by her power and majesty. He would not rule her; he would not even attempt a mastery; she would still be Emir and a wife.
"Allah is good," said the Emir, bending his head. "And now," the Mystic continued, "thou hast eaten and drunk with me in the Pentagram of the Magii. Such is the astral drawing between the five lamps. Henceforth in conflicts of interest, fortune against fortune, influences undreamt of will come to thy assistance. So much have I already done for thee." The Emir bowed lower than before.
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