It is giving up the joy of eternity. For we
are taught to believe that if a man's head is severed from his body, it
alone goes to Paradise. His soul is maimed. It is but a bodiless head,
and all celestial joys are for ever denied to it."
"How horrible!" the girl exclaimed. "Dost thou really believe such a
thing?"
He feared that he had made a mistake, and that she would look upon him
as an alien, a pagan, with whom she could have no sympathy. "If I am
more modern in my ideas than my forefathers," he said tactfully, "I must
not confess it to a Roumia, must I, oh Rose of the West?--for that would
be disloyal to Islam. Yet if I did believe, still would I give my head
for the love of the one woman, the star of my destiny, she whose sweet
look deserves that the word 'ain' should stand for bright fountain, and
for the ineffable light in a virgin's eyes."
"I did not know until to-day, Si Maieddine, that thou wert a poet,"
Victoria told him.
"All true Arabs are poets. Our language--the literary, not the common
Arabic--is the language of poets, as thou must have read in thy books.
But I have now such inspiration as perhaps no man ever had; and thou
wilt learn other things about me, while we journey together in the
desert."
As he said this he looked at her with a look which even her simplicity
could not have mistaken if she had thought of it; but instantly the
vision of Saidee came between her eyes and his.
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