ossible to escape from
it, even with the help of a saviour-knight. If she said "yes" to what he
asked, as she was trying to make herself believe she had a moral and
legal right to do, they would be found out and killed, that was all.

She was not brave. The lassitude which is a kind of spurious resignation
poisons courage, or quenches it as water quenches fire. Although she
hated her life, if it could be called life, had no pleasure in it, and
had almost forgotten how to hope, still she was afraid of being
violently struck down.

Not long ago a woman in the village had tried to leave her husband with
a man she loved. The husband found out, and having shot the man before
her eyes, stabbed her with many wounds, one for each traitorous kiss,
according to the custom of the desert; not one knife-thrust deep enough
to kill; but by and by she had died from the shock of horror, and loss
of blood. Nobody blamed the husband. He had done the thing which was
right and just. And stories like this came often to the ears of the
woman on the roof through her negresses, or from the attendants at the
Moorish bath.

The man she loved would not be shot like the wretched Bedouin, who was
of no importance except to her for whom his life was given; but
something would happen. He would be taken ill with a strange disease, of
which he would die after dreadful suffering; or at best his career would
be ruined; for the greatest of all marabouts was a man of immense
influence. Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like a
Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's features,
yet his power was known far and wide--in Morocco; all along the caravan
route to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and
even in Paris itself.

She reminded herself of these things, and at one moment her heart was
like ice in her breast; but at the next, it was like a ball of fire; and
pulling out three long bright hairs from her head, she twisted them
round the cord which the carrier-pigeon had brought. Before tying it
under his wing again, she scattered more yellow seeds for the dove
Imams, because she did not want them to fly away until she was ready to
let her messenger go. Thus there was the less danger that the
carrier-pigeon would be noticed. Only Noura, her negress, knew of him.
Noura had smuggled him into the Zaouia, and she herself had trained him
by giving him food that he liked, though his home was at Oued Tolga,