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Updated: July 26, 2025
"Now seat yourself on the mat, beloved guest, and refresh yourself with what poor Butheita has to offer you. Pray take the bread and break it; and let us eat it together in token that we are friends, and that you are sacred to me." "And you are sacred to me," replies Mohammed, gravely, as he takes up the black bread and breaks it.
"Gazelle, have pity on your lover." She seemed not to have heard him, bowed down over her instrument, and played in such loud, shrill tones, that it almost deafened Mohammed, who well understood Butheita's motive in playing so. He smiled at her in silence. Butheita laughed. "You see my song has gladdened you, and your countentance smiles again. O joy! See, there in the distance!
He walked into the inner apartment, and so noiselessly that his step was not heard by her who stood behind the partition, by Butheita. She stood there, her head bowed down, and her gaze fixed on the spot where she had broken bread with Mohammed. Now, hearing her name murmured behind her, she started and turned around.
She takes her father's arm, and, without looking at the man who walks close behind him, draws the sheik quickly to the tent. But Mohammed, with a proud and grave expression of countenance, advances to meet them. Butheita now hardly recognizes, in the haughty sarechsme, with his imperious bearing, the stranger, who is no longer a stranger to her heart. "Speak, sheik!
"No, it will only be a poor child of the desert, who sits beside you," said Butheita, smiling. "Only look at poor, miserable me. There is nothing beautiful or radiant about me, proud stranger! Let me go, you would die of hunger and thirst if I remained here, and it would be shameful, too, if I should neglect the duty of hospitality toward my guest. But I will tell you what I can and will do!
Butheita still sleeps soundly. He who glides to her side regards her for a moment with an ardent, passionate glance, and then bends down and quickly binds her feet, and her hands, that lie crossed on her breast, with silken cloths.
"I should like to be such a captive forever, Butheita; it is heavenly to be encircled in these fair arms." "You are singing your sweet songs again, and oh, they sound so sweet!" said she. And yet, as he attempts to lay his head closer to her shoulder, she timidly recoils with an anxious look in her eyes. "Not so, stranger.
Butheita had only smiled mysteriously in response to his questions; she well knows, however, why she does so: she knows it is to keep sacred from the gaze of other men the countenance consecrated by his glance. Night has come. The sheik is sleeping soundly on his mat in the first apartment of the tent, and Butheita on her cushions in the inner apartment.
Arrived at the boundary line of the desert, where two horses awaited them, the sheik halted. Having dismounted with Mohammed, he addressed a few loud words to the dromedary; it turned, and flew homeward across the desert. "It knows the way," said the sheik, smiling. "It will return alone to Butheita." They mounted the horses, and rode on swiftly through meadows, and palm and sycamore groves.
Come, Butheita, what they have to say to each other does not concern us, we have done our duty, and I have performed what I promised. The Mameluke bey has also kept his promise, and my men are already on the battlefield; I, too, must speedily return, my child, for we are to bring home costly spoils."
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