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Updated: May 17, 2025
And pretty M'barka, what of her?" "Alas! M'barka's a public woman now in Hoolia's house at Marrakesh. No, don't curse her, Jellali; the poor child was driven to it. What were we to do with the children crying for bread? And then there was nothing to fetch you this journey, Jellali." "I'll not eat it now it's brought. My boy a beggar and my girl a harlot? By Allah!
Lella M'Barka had invited her guest to sit on cushions beside the divan where she lay, and the interest in her feverish eyes, which seldom left Victoria's face, was so intense as to embarrass the girl. "Thou hast wondrous hair," she said, "and when it is unbound it must be a fountain of living gold. Is it some kind of henna grown in thy country, which dyes it that beautiful colour?"
M'Barka smoothed away the tracings in the sand. "What is there no more?" asked Maïeddine. "No, it is dark before my eyes now. The light has gone from the sand. I can still tell her a few little things, perhaps. Such things as the luckiest colours to wear, the best days to choose for journeys. But she is different from most girls. I do not think she would care for such hints."
The room where she was to sleep was on another side of the court from that of Lella M'Barka, but Hsina took great pains to assure her that there was nothing to fear. No one could come into this court; and she Hsina slept near by with Fafann. To clap the hands once would be to bring one of them instantly. And Hsina would wake her before dawn.
I had to agree not to ask questions, and he would never say for certain whether Cassim was dead or not, but he promised sacredly to bring me to the place where my sister lived. His cousin Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab was with us, very ill and suffering, but brave.
"One is my friend," the girl pleaded, with a glance at the high couch of rugs on which M'Barka lay. "A young girl cannot have a man for a friend. He may be a lover or a husband, but never a friend. Thou knowest this in thy heart, O Rose, and thou hast sworn to me that never hast thou had a lover." Victoria did not care to argue. "I am sure he has come here to try and find me. He is anxious.
"If I had told thee then, that it must be longer, wouldst thou have come with me? I think not. For thou sayest I did not wholly trust thee. How much less didst thou trust me?" "Completely. Or I would not have put myself in thy charge." "Perhaps thou art convinced of that now, when thou knowest me and Lella M'Barka, and thou hast slept in the tent of my father, and in the houses of my friends.
She shall know that she owes all to my thought and care. In three weeks I can pull down that high wall between us. She will have learned to depend on me, to need me, to long for me when I am out of her sight, as the gazelle longs for a fountain of sweet water." "Poet and dreamer thou hast become, Maïeddine," said Lella M'Barka with a tired smile. "I have become a lover. That means both and more.
It was only beginning to be daylight when they left the house and went out to the carriage in which Victoria had been driven the night before. She and Lella M'Barka were both veiled, though there was no eye to see them.
Nothing like these things had ever been seen by mistress or servants, except in occasional peeps through shuttered carriage windows when passing French shops: for Lella M'Barka Bent Djellab, daughter of Princes of Touggourt, was what young Arabs call "vieux turban."
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