Don't
skip anything, or I can't judge."
Saidee's manner was feverishly emphatic, but she did not look at
Victoria. She watched her own hand moving back and forth, restlessly,
from the girl's finger-tips, up the slender, bare wrist, and down again.
Victoria told how she had seen Maieddine on the boat, coming to Algiers;
how he had appeared later at the hotel, and offered to help her,
hinting, rather than saying, that he had been a friend of Cassim's, and
knew where to find Cassim's wife. Then she went on to the story of the
journey through the desert, praising Maieddine, and hesitating only when
she came to the evening of his confession and threat. But Saidee
questioned her, and she answered.
"It came out all right, you see," she finished at last. "I knew it must,
even in those few minutes when I couldn't help feeling a little afraid,
because I seemed to be in his power. But of course I wasn't really.
God's power was over his, and he felt it. Things always _do_ come out
right, if you just _know_ they will."
Saidee shivered a little, though her hand on Victoria's was hot. "I wish
I could think like that," she half whispered. "If I could, I----"
"What, dearest?"
"I should be brave, that's all. I've lost my spirit--lost faith, too--as
I've lost everything else. I used to be quite a good sort of girl; but
what can you expect after ten years shut up in a Mussulman harem? It's
something in my favour that they never succeeded in 'converting' me, as
they almost always do with a European woman when they've shut her
up--just by tiring her out.
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