Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 17, 2025
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.
"Of what is my beloved one thinking?" he asked her. She looked up, but she did not see his face above her. She saw only the tent where the wind from the Nile could come, and Doolga within radiant with the joy she had given her. "Of what should your slave be thinking, lord," she answered, "but love and happiness?" It was evening.
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.
"This then is life," she thought, as she put her arms round his neck. "This is what I am giving to Doolga." "Am I really more beautiful to-night than I have been?" she asked presently, as they sat crouched close side by side at the foot of the palm, looking towards the silver river. "A thousand times!" he answered passionately. "I have never loved you, never seen you as I do to-night."
Within, seated cross-legged on the scarlet rug and sheepskin which formed their bed, were two girls braiding their hair before a tiny square of glass, which each in turn held up for the other. "How cold the morning is! How I hate to hear the wind shake the door flaps," one said and shivered. "Doolga, don't; you are holding the glass all crooked; I cannot see myself.
Now she was keenly alive; life was sharp and alert in every fibre, but it was the last. This night of life was also a night of good-byes. To-morrow she would look on the river again, but she would be dead then dead to joy and to love; it would only be Doolga who would be living rich in both these gifts gifts given by her. The thought ran through her with a tumultuous gladness.
Never, never, could she unveil for him now. He must never see her. Though he loved her a thousand times, yet would she never take him from Doolga. Doolga, bright, graceful, and beautiful, the light of her eyes, the joy of the tent! could she bear to see her brought through the door cold, motionless, lifeless, killed by the embrace of the Nile?
Life and she had finally separated. Entering the tent with noiseless feet, no sound disturbed the sleeping chief, and she crept to where her sister sat up, wild-eyed and sleepless, on the bed. "This he gave to Doolga," she said, with her lips pressed to Doolga's ear, and passed over her head a necklace of faultless beads of jade.
Her face was buried in the sheepskin, yet she saw plainly in the wall of darkness before her eyeballs the figure of the Bishâreen standing out against the pink light of the morning sky. So it was Melun that Doolga loved! And to Melun all her own passionate impulsive heart had been given through her eyes.
And ever as she listened, the thought of the Sheik and his withered arms rose before her. Still it was Doolga's future she looked into, the secrets of Doolga's happiness she learned. As often as he murmured, "Doolga!" and caressed her, a wave of joy passed through her. Three hours before the dawn they parted, and with slow, sad steps she returned to her father's tent. Her strength was spent.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking