ow the
ordinary trains to pass.

CHAPTER XXIV

"_The watchmen that went about the city found
me; they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers
of the wall took away my veil from me_."

SONG OF SOLOMON.

The night before Ben Kelham's return to Cairo, Zulannah sat on a pile
of cushions, with her back to the crumbling plaster wall, in the
filthy, smoke-filled hovel.

She had completely recovered, and save for the excruciating pain caused
by the shrunken muscles when she moved, was as sound as a bell, and
likely to live to a ripe old age, slave to her whilom servant, who sat
on his heels, inhaling the fumes of the jewel-encrusted _nargileh_
which his heart had always coveted.

It is useless writing about the hell through which the woman had lived
from the moment she had returned to consciousness. Besides, there are
some things which words cannot describe, and which in any case are best
left alone, not even to the imagination.

She was absolutely in the power of the negroid brute. With the
destruction of her beauty she had lost everything save what she had in
the bank, and from the ever-growing heaps of little canvas bags in a
corner and little piles of banknotes under the straw, she knew that
some day that, too, must come to an end.

She had loved her jewels, loved the shimmering pearls and sparkling
diamonds, and had found her greatest joy in dipping her hand into a
leather bag filled with unset stones. How often had she sat in the
luxury of her bedroom, revelling in the trickle of the rubies,
sapphires and emeralds from between her fingers into her lap.

Even those she had lost.

The Milner safe stood open, showing empty shelves, and she shuddered
yet at the memory of the frightful scene which had followed her refusal
to open it.

She loved jewels; wanted them for their beauty; had fought the negro
for them; but there was one thing she clung to even more, and that was
life, so that when the huge hands had slowly, so very slowly pressed
upon her neck, she had given in and setting the combination, had swung
the door slowly back.

And Qatim, grey-green with fright, thinking that it had been worked by
the power of a _djinn_ or devil, had flung her out into the night, and
having scraped a hole in the foetid earth under the straw, with fervent
prayers to whatever he worshipped, had withdrawn the jewels, hidden
them, and called the woman back.

Yes! she clung to life. Strange is it ho