Is it the time, while yet the
singers are beneath the windows, to assail the bride? All bridegrooms are
mad. It is all sunshine and morning with the favourite, the Inglesi. Only
when the shadows lengthen may he be stricken. Not now."
"Why dost thou hide this from Kaid, O thou brother of the eagle?"
"For my gain and thine, keeper of the gate. To-night I am weak, because I
am poor. To-morrow I shall be rich and, it may be, strong. If Kaid knew
of this tonight, I should be a prisoner before cockcrow. What claims has
a prisoner? Kaid would be in my brother's house at dawn, seizing all that
is there and elsewhere, and I on my way to Fazougli, to be strangled or
drowned."
"O wise and far-seeing! Thine eye pierces the earth. What is there to do?
What is my gain--what thine?"
"Thy gain? The payment of thy debt to me." Mizraim's face lengthened. His
was a loathsome sort of gratitude. He was willing to pay in kind; but
what Oriental ever paid a debt without a gift in return, even as a
bartering Irishman demands his lucky penny.
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