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Updated: May 22, 2025
The girls were seated on the bed in one corner of the tent close beside its stretched canvas wall. There was a little eyelet, a square hole with a flap buttoned down over it, on a level with their heads. At Silka's question Doolga turned to the canvas, and, with an impatient movement, tore up the flap and looked out.
She entered the palm-grove and went straight to the tree that Doolga had told her of, a withered palm. A figure sat at the foot of the tree. The starlight gleamed on its white clothing. Silka's feet stopped mechanically as she saw him; her heart beat so that she could scarcely breathe; but he had caught sight of her, and sprang to his feet and came towards her.
The burning words, uttered low, in that strange, strained voice she hardly recognised, fell upon Silka like drops of molten lead. Her sister seemed mad: her eyes started forward from her livid face: her clasp on Silka's wrists gripped like iron. Silka's heart was overwhelmed with pity and distress.
"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.
She saw the burnished gold of the plain and the luminous sky, and between these two a figure that stood by a low brown tent, with the sunlight falling full on its noble brow and the straight profile turned towards them. Doolga wrung Silka's hand, that she still clutched, as they knelt side by side on the sheepskin looking through the eyelet.
So much alike they were that one face seemed the reflection of the other, only there was a bloom, a light, a sweetness on Silka's that was missing in the other. "Why?" she breathed after that first startled silence, "what is the matter, Doolga? Tell me; tell me everything." She drew nearer her sister, and put one arm round her.
"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!
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