and in the battle forget what I have seen. Since I am unclean, and am
denied the bosom of Allah, shall I not go as a warrior to Hell, where men
will fear me? Speak, Saadat, canst thou deny me this?"

Nothing of repentance, so far as he knew, moved the dark soul; but, like
some evil spirit, he would choose the way to his own doom, the place and
the manner of it: a sullen, cruel, evil being, unyielding in his evil,
unmoved by remorse--so far as he knew. Yet he would die fighting, and
for Egypt "and for thee, if it must be so. To strike, to strike, to
strike, and earn death!" What Achmet did not see, David saw, the glimmer
of light breaking through the cloud of shame and evil and doom. Yonder
in the Soudan more problems than one would be solved, more lives than one
be put to the extreme test. He did not answer Achmet's question yet.
"Zaida--?" he said in a low voice. The pathos of her doom had been a
dark memory.

Achmet's voice dropped lower as he answered. "She lived till the day her
sister died. I never saw her face; but I was sent to bear each day to
her door the food she ate and a balass of water; and I did according to
my sentence. Yet I heard her voice. And once, at last, the day she
died, she spoke to me, and said from inside the hut: 'Thy work is done,
Achmet. Go in peace.' And that night she lay down on her sister's
grave, and in the morning she was found dead upon it."

David's eyes were blinded with tears. "It was too long," he said at
last, as though to himself.

"That day," continued Achmet, "there fell ill with leprosy the Christian
priest from this place who had served in that black service so long; and
then a fire leapt up in me. Zaida was gone--I had brought food and a