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Oh, Silka, you have always loved me: save me now. I cannot. It will be death to me. I love I love " she hesitated; then added, "so much. You love no one. Why not then the Sheik? Do this for me. I will think of you, bless you always. Save me from death; save me from the Nile!"
"You have but to unveil your face to the Sheik," returned the other quickly, eagerly, almost furiously, "and he will take you instead of me. Think, Silka! the head of the tribe, fifty camels, a thousand goats " She stopped in her eager outpour of persuasion. Silka was looking at her straight from under her dark, level brows, her lips curled in a sorrowful disdain.
"That is he!" she said, and Silka's lips parted suddenly in a little scream of pain. "What is the matter?" asked Doolga roughly, drawing her back from the aperture, and letting the flap fall. "You hurt me," replied Silka. "Is that the one you love?" Her voice sounded tremulous: her eyes, fixed on Doolga, seemed to widen with increasing pain.
"Are you pleased to come, my daughter, to the oasis of roses with me?" "My lord beholds his slave," answered Silka, and her eyes were full of light, and her lips were curved in smiles. "My camels, four of the best, will find their stable behind your tent to-night," said the Sheik to her father, and he filled the cup he had drunk from and handed it to the girl. Silka raised it to her lips.
The pink light from without, striking through the tent canvas, touched her face, showing its delicately-cut, exquisite features and the tender love filling the eyes. "I hate the Sheik!" sobbed Doolga, putting down her head on the other's soft bare shoulder; "I don't want him. I love him!" And Silka felt that everything indeed was told. The incoherent, inexplicable words were clear enough to her.
Now the two girls sat clasped in each other's arms behind a curtain hung across a corner of the tent, and waited silently till they should be summoned. "If she be fairer than your daughter Doolga," they heard the Sheik say good-humouredly, "she must be fair indeed, and worth four camels. Let me see her." At those words Silka rose and stepped from behind the little curtain.
"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!
I am in terror of him. Help me, save me!" The little glass fell on the blanket between them. In the warm rose glow now filling the tent, Doolga's face was ashen-coloured. Awe-struck and startled Silka gazed wide-eyed upon her. For an instant the two girls sat staring in silence into each other's eyes.
"You love Melun too?" she said at last. "Then why do you not take him? One glance from you and he is yours." "He was yours first," answered Silka miserably. "I cannot take him from you." "And you will marry the Sheik to save me?" "Yes," replied Silka.
Suddenly Doolga grew calm; she lifted her face, and Silka saw it was grey, with great lines of anguish cut in it, and her heart seemed to contract with pain, for she loved Doolga better than anything she knew in the world, and Doolga's suffering was her suffering. "I thought, father thought you would be glad to marry the Sheik," she faltered. "I cannot.
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