dain.

"Have his riches any weight with you, Doolga? Why do you offer them
to me?" she said proudly.

"Because you are free: you do not love," impetuously returned the
other with glib, persistent vehemence. "I would marry the Sheik, I
would prize his flocks, his riches; but I love--I love--I cannot!"

"Whom do you love so much?" replied Silka sadly. "Why have you not
told me? Who is he?"

The girls were seated on the bed in one corner of the tent close
beside its stretched canvas wall. There was a little eyelet, a
square hole with a flap buttoned down over it, on a level with
their heads. At Silka's question Doolga turned to the canvas, and,
with an impatient movement, tore up the flap and looked out. The
plain was bathed in gold: above, the pure, pink glow still hung in
the limpid sky. The encampment was astir. The tents were open, and
little cooking fires, sending up their spirals of blue smoke were
dotted over the sand. At a few paces' distance from the main row of
tents, the camels, lying down, made a velvet-like patch of shade on
the gleaming gold of the sand, and herds of white goats stood near,
their silky coats flashing in the morning sunlight. Silka looked
out, too, over her sister's shoulder. She saw the burnished gold of
the plain and the luminous sky, and between these two a figure
that stood by a low brown tent, with the sunlight falling full on
its noble brow and the straight profile turned towards them. Doolga
wrung Silka's hand, that she still clutched, as they knelt side by
side on the sheepskin looking through the eyelet.

"That is he!" she said, and Silka's lips parted suddenly in a
little scream of pain.

"What is the matter?" asked Doolga roughly, drawing her back from
the aperture, and letting the flap fall.

"You hurt me," replied Silka. "Is that the one you love?" Her voice
sounded tremulous: her eyes, fixed on Doolga, seemed to widen with
increasing pain.

"Yes, that is he; that is Melun," answered Doolga softly. "Is he
not handsome, wonderful? Why do you stare so? Might not any girl
love him?"

A little smile played round Silka's lips.

"Yes, indeed, any girl might love him," she answered.

"But not as I do--no, never! Oh, Silka, I cannot tell you how I
love him. More than the Nile, more than the stars, more than we
have ever loved each other! I have met him often when I went to
draw water, and sometimes we have stayed together in the
palm-grove. I was so happy till father sold