e there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with
sudden fierceness. "Is it that which would make me repent? Was I worse
than thousands of others? I have come out to die--to fight and die.
Aiwa, I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me
death as I desire it. My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and
she was got by war, and all her people. War and fighting were their
portion--as they ate, as they drank and slept. In the black years behind
me among the Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the
dead, and the agony of death, and the poison of the agony! Life, it is
done for me--am I not accursed? But to die fighting--ay, fighting for
Egypt, since it must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to
strike, and strike, and strike, and earn death! Must the dog, because he
is a dog, die in the slime? Shall he not be driven from the village to
die in the clean sand? Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did
with Egypt what he willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand?
Is there in me aught of that Achmet that any should know?"

"None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David.

"I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way
of escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan. There will be fighting
there--"

"Not by my will," interrupted David.

"Then by the will of Sheitan the accursed; but there will be
fighting--am I not an Arab, do I not know? Thou hast not conquered yet.
Bid me go where thou wilt, do what thou wilt, so that I may be among the
fighters, and in the battle forget what I have seen. Since I am unclean,
and am denied the bosom of Allah, shall I not go as a warrior to Hell,
where men will fear me? Speak, Saadat, canst thou deny me this?"

Nothing of repentance, so far as he knew, moved the dark soul; but, like
some evil spirit, he would choose the way to his own doom, the place and
the manner of it: a sullen, cruel, evil being, unyielding in his evil,
unmoved by remorse--so far as he knew. Yet he would die fighting, and
for Egypt "and for thee, if it must be so. To strike, to strike, to
strike, and earn death!" What Achmet did not see, David saw, the glimmer
of light breaking through the cloud of shame and evil and doom. Yonder
in the Soudan more problems than one would be solved, more lives than
one be put to the extreme test. He did not answer Achmet's question yet.
"Zaida--?" he said in a low voice. The pathos of her doom ha