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Updated: June 7, 2025
Fellowes," she said, with a slight frown of wonder. "I will not sing it's no use, I will not." Al'mah's eyes were vivid with anger, and her lips, so much the resort of humour, were set in determination. Her words came with low vehemence. Adrian Fellowes' hand nervously appealed to her. His voice was coaxing and gentle. "Al'mah, must I tell Mrs. Byng that?" he asked.
As the singing-woman's hands lay in hers, a flush slowly spread over Al'mah's face, and behind the direct power of her eyes there came a light which made them aglow with understanding. "I always thought you selfish almost meanly selfish," Al'mah said presently.
A sorely wounded officer, able with the help of a slightly injured gunner to get out of the furnace of fire, had brought word of Stafford's death but with the instinct of those to whom there come whisperings, visions of things, Al'mah felt she must go and find the man with whose fate, in a way, her own had been linked; who, like herself, had been a derelict upon the sea of life; the grip of whose hand, the look of whose eyes the last time she saw him, told her that as a brother loves so he loved her.
The blinds and curtains were up at these windows, and Jigger could see her as she sang. Never in all her wonderful career had Al'mah sung so well with so much feeling and an artist's genius not even that night of all when she made her debut. The misery, the gloom, the bitterness of the past hour had stirred every fibre of her being, and her voice told with thrilling power the story of a soul.
"A woman of the Prince heard him give instructions for thy disposal, Effendina, when the Citadel should turns its guns upon Cairo and the Palace. She was once of thy harem. Thou didst give her in marriage, and she came to the harem of Prince Harrik at last. A woman from without who sang to her a singing girl, an al'mah she trusted with the paper to warn thee, Effendina, in her name.
Al'mah had smiled her way through the world; with a quick word of sympathy for any who were hurt by the blows of life or time; with an open hand for the poor and miserable, now that she could afford it and hiding her own troubles behind mirth and bonhommie; for her humour, as her voice, was deep and strong like that of a man.
"I am glad you are not going to-night," she answered, graciously. "Al'mah is arriving this afternoon, and she sings for us this evening. Is it not thrilling?" There was a general murmur of pleasure, vaguely joined by Adrian Fellowes, who glanced quickly round the little group, and met an enigmatical glance from Byng's eye.
There are no signs of violence; neither of suicide or anything else. If you want me, I shall be at my rooms after ten o'clock to-night. I have got all his papers." Yours ever, Jasmine watched Rudyard closely as he read. A strange look passed over his face, but his hand was steady as he put the note in his pocket. She then saw him look searchingly at Al'mah as he went forward to greet her.
If I find that to be so, I tell you I shall hate you; and I shall hate myself; but I shall hate you more a thousand times more." She paused with agony and appealing, with confusion and vague horror in her face. Her look was direct and absorbing, her eyes like wells of sullen fire. "Al'mah," he replied with fluttered eagerness, "let us talk of this later not now later.
Al'mah looked round the rather formal sitting-room, with its somewhat incongruous furnishing leopard-skins from Bechuanaland; lion-skins from Matabeleland; silver-mounted tusks of elephants from Eastern Cape Colony and Portuguese East Africa; statues and statuettes of classical subjects; two or three Holbeins, a Rembrandt, and an El Greco on the walls; a piano, a banjo, and a cornet; and, in the corner, a little roulette-table.
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