f a fool? Wilt thou simper and gape and trifle
away thy days whilst that dog-descended Frank tramples thee underfoot,
using thee but as a stepping-stone to the power that should be thine
own? And that be so, Marzak, I would thou hadst been strangled in my
womb."

He recoiled before the Italian fury of her, was dully resentful even,
suspecting that in such words from a woman were she twenty times his
mother, there was something dishonouring to his manhood.

"What can I do?" he cried.

"Dost ask me? Art thou not a man to think and act? I tell thee that
misbegotten son of a Christian and a Jew will trample thee in the dust.
He is greedy as the locust, wily as the serpent, and ferocious as the
panther. By Allah! I would I had never borne a son. Rather might men
point at me the finger of scorn and call me mother of the wind than that
I should have brought forth a man who knows not how to be a man."

"Show me the way," he cried. "Set me a task; tell me what to do and
thou shalt not find me lacking, O my mother. Until then spare me these
insults, or I come no more to thee."

At this threat that strange woman heaved herself up from her soft couch.
She ran to him and flung her arms about his neck, set her cheek against
his own. Not eighteen years in the Basha's hareem had stifled the
European mother in her, the passionate Sicilian woman, fierce as a tiger
in her maternal love.

"O my child, my lovely boy," she almost sobbed. "It is my fear for thee
that makes me harsh. If I am angry it is but my love that speaks, my
rage for thee to see another come usurping the place beside thy father
that should be thine. Ah! but we will prevail, sweet son of mine. I
shall find a way to return that foreign offal to the dung-heap whence it
sprang. Trust me, O Marzak! Sh! Thy father comes. Away! Leave me alone
with him."

She was wise in that, for she knew that alone Asad was more easily
controlled by her, since the pride was absent which must compel him to
turn and rend her did she speak so before others. Marzak vanished behind
the screen of fretted sandalwood that masked one doorway even as Asad
loomed in the other.

He came forward smiling, his slender brown fingers combing his long
beard, his white djellaba trailing behind him along the ground.

"Thou hast heard, not a doubt, O Fenzileh," said he. "Art thou answered
enough?"

She sank down again upon her cushions and idly considered herself in a
steel mirror set in silver.

"A