He thanked her,
but had already taken coffee. And she? All her strength would be needed.
She must not neglect to sustain herself now that everything depended
upon her health.
"My health!" she echoed, with a sigh, and a gesture of something like
despair. "O my cousin, if thou knewest how I suffer, how I dread what
lies before me, thou wouldst in mercy change thy plans even now. Thou
wouldst go the short way to the end of our journey. Think of the
difference to me! A week or eight days of travel at most, instead of
three weeks, or more if I falter by the way, and thou art forced to
wait."
Maieddine's face hardened under her imploring eyes, but he answered with
gentleness, "Thou knowest, my kind friend and cousin, that I would give
my blood to save thee suffering, but it is more than my blood that thou
askest now. It is my heart, for my heart is in this journey and what I
hope from it, as I told thee yesterday. We discussed it all, thou and I,
between us. Thou hast loved, and I made thee understand something of
what I feel for this girl, whose beauty, as thou hast seen, is that of
the houris in Paradise. Never have I found her like; and it may be I
care more because of the obstacles which stand high as a wall between me
and her. Because of the man who is her sister's husband, I must not fail
in respect, or even seem to fail. I cannot take her and ride away, as I
might with a maiden humbly placed, trusting to make her happy after she
was mine.
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