e had not known whether to weep
or to laugh, whether to fear or to rejoice.

"It is done," Marzak had cried exultantly. "The dog hath withstood him
and so destroyed himself. There will be an end to Sakr-el-Bahr this
night." And he had added: "The praise to Allah!"

But from Fenzileh came no response to his prayer of thanksgiving. True,
Sakr-el-Bahr must be destroyed, and by a sword that she herself had
forged. Yet was it not inevitable that the stroke which laid him low
must wound her on its repercussion? That was the question to which now
she sought an answer. For all her eagerness to speed the corsair to his
doom, she had paused sufficiently to weigh the consequences to herself;
she had not overlooked the circumstance that an inevitable result of
this must be Asad's appropriation of that Frankish slave-girl. But at
the time it had seemed to her that even this price was worth paying to
remove Sakr-el-Bahr definitely and finally from her son's path--which
shows that, after all, Fenzileh the mother was capable of some
self-sacrifice. She comforted herself now with the reflection that
the influence, whose waning she feared might be occasioned by the
introduction of a rival into Asad's hareem, would no longer be so
vitally necessary to herself and Marzak once Sakr-el-Bahr were removed.
The rest mattered none so much to her. Yet it mattered something, and
the present state of things left her uneasy, her mind a cockpit of
emotions. Her grasp could not encompass all her desires at once, it
seemed; and whilst she could gloat over the gratification of one, she
must bewail the frustration of another. Yet in the main she felt that
she should account herself the gainer.

In this state of mind she had waited, scarce heeding the savagely joyous
and entirely selfish babblings of her cub, who cared little what might
betide his mother as the price of the removal of that hated rival
from his path. For him, at least, there was nothing but profit in the
business, no cause for anything but satisfaction; and that satisfaction
he voiced with a fine contempt for his mother's feelings.

Anon they witnessed Asad's return. They saw the janissaries come
swinging into the courtyard and range themselves there whilst the Basha
made his appearance, walking slowly, with steps that dragged a little,
his head sunk upon his breast, his hands behind him. They waited to see
slaves following him, leading or carrying the girl he had gone to fetch.
But th