thee."

"I could not die there--Dost thou think that I repent?" he added with
sudden fierceness. "Is it that which would make me repent? Was I worse
than thousands of others? I have come out to die--to fight and die.
Aiwa, I have come to thee, whom I hated, because thou canst give me death
as I desire it. My mother was an Arab slave from Senaar, and she was got
by war, and all her people. War and fighting were their portion--as they
ate, as they drank and slept. In the black years behind me among the
Unclean, there was naught to fight--could one fight the dead, and the
agony of death, and the poison of the agony! Life, it is done for me--
am I not accursed? But to die fighting--ay, fighting for Egypt, since it
must be, and fighting for thee, since it must be; to strike, and strike,
and strike, and earn death! Must the dog, because he is a dog, die in
the slime? Shall he not be driven from the village to die in the clean
sand? Saadat, who will see in me Achmet Pasha, who did with Egypt what
he willed, and was swept away by the besom in thy hand? Is there in me
aught of that Achmet that any should know?"

"None would know thee for that Achmet," answered David.

"I know, it matters not how--at last a letter found me, and the way of
escape--that thou goest again to the Soudan. There will be fighting
there--"

"Not by my will," interrupted David.

"Then by the will of Sheitan the accursed; but there will be fighting--
am I not an Arab, do I not know? Thou hast not conquered yet. Bid me go
where thou wilt, do what thou wilt, so that I may be among the fighters,