What is his purpose with her--that he would not show her
in the suk as the law prescribes, but comes slinking here to beg thee
set aside the law for him? Ha! I talk in vain. I have shown thee
graver things to prove his vile disloyalty, and yet thou'lt fawn upon
him whilst thy fangs are bared to thine own son."
He advanced upon her, stooped, caught her by the wrist, and heaved her
up.
His face showed grey under its deep tan. His aspect terrified her at
last and made an end of her reckless forward courage.
He raised his voice to call.
"Ya anta! Ayoub!"
She gasped, livid in her turn with sudden terror. "My lord, my lord!"
she whimpered. "Stream of my life, be not angry! What wilt thou do?"
He smiled evilly. "Do?" he growled. "What I should have done ten years
ago and more. We'll have the rods to thee." And again he called, more
insistently--"Ayoub!"
"My lord, my lord!" she gasped in shuddering horror now that at last she
found him set upon the thing to which so often she had dared him.
"Pity! Pity!" She grovelled and embraced his knees. "In the name of
the Pitying the Pitiful be merciful upon the excesses to which my love
for thee may have driven this poor tongue of mine. 0 my sweet lord! 0
father of Marzak!"
Her distress, her beauty, and perhaps, more than either, her unusual
humility and submission may have moved him. For even as at that moment
Ayoub--the sleek and portly eunuch, who was her wazeer and chamberlain--
loomed in the inner doorway, salaaming, he vanished again upon the
instant, dismissed by a peremptory wave of the Basha's hand.
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