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Updated: May 19, 2025
Before letting them depart, moved by some strange impulse, he gave Zoraida forty crowns; and he had not robbed her of her beautiful gown. They steered their skiff towards the shore, where they landed soon after midnight. Immediately they left the shore, eager to know where they were.
Tell them, tell Kendric, that it was all a jest. Nothing more." "Had you won," said Zoraida sweetly, "what then, Señor Bruce? Would you have been jesting?" Bruce's lips moved but no words came. Suddenly he whirled from her upon Kendric, his face distorted with rage. "Damn you!" he burst out. No longer was it merely a case of murder in his look.
"And yet Zoraida loved you once! loved you as people love where I was born!" The Saracen's voice had altered. His speech was like the rustle of papers. "You did not love Zoraida. And so it came about that upon Walburga's Eve, at midnight, Zoraida hanged herself beside your doorway. Thus we love where I was born. . . . And I, I cut the rope with my left hand.
Once more his face was white and looked sick. He had in his eyes the startled expression of a man rudely awakened from profound slumber. He walked with dragging feet across the room and dropped wearily into a chair. He put his elbows on his knees and his head into his hands. Zoraida, seeing that Kendric would not come to her, caught up her gown and leaped lightly down, landing softly like a cat.
And thus he would go to Zoraida's garden and ask for fruit, which her father gave him, not knowing him; but though, as he afterwards told me, he sought to speak to Zoraida, and tell her who he was, and that by my orders he was to take her to the land of the Christians, so that she might feel satisfied and easy, he had never been able to do so; for the Moorish women do not allow themselves to be seen by any Moor or Turk, unless their husband or father bid them: with Christian captives they permit freedom of intercourse and communication, even more than might be considered proper.
Then, stepping quickly to the curtain, she threw it back and he entered. A vain, headstrong girl, deemed Kendric, given the opportunity and very great wealth, might be looked to for absurdities of this kind. But was all of this nothing more, nothing worse, than absurdity? Suppose Zoraida were sincere in all that she had said to him, in all the things she did?
But though to me and my comrades it had seemed a better plan to send to Majorca for the vessel, as the Moorish lady suggested, we did not dare to oppose him, fearing that if we did not do as he said he would denounce us, and place us in danger of losing all our lives if he were to disclose our dealings with Zoraida, for whose life we would have all given our own.
Her retainer handed her a small stool; she placed it and, since it was near the spot where he stood, Kendric made out the four crosses where the four legs were to go. Then Zoraida went swiftly back to her chair. As she sat down she called again sharply to the squat brute who served her.
From somewhere else, startling the man when he saw it gliding by him on its soft pads, a big puma, ran forward, threw up its head, snarling, its tail jerking back and forth restlessly. Zoraida spoke quietly; the monster cat crept close to her chair and lay down before her, stretched out to five feet of graceful length. Zoraida set one foot lightly upon the tawny back.
He noted a slight restless stirring of Zoraida's foot and stepped to her side, his hand again on her arm. "We are not through with you yet," he told her. "Miss Gordon will want some clothes." "In her room," agreed Zoraida. "Come." Had she delayed her answer the fraction of a second he might have followed her, suspecting nothing.
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