Hassan remained fixed to the spot, paralysed with horror, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth open, his hands clenched, a petrified image of despair. For some minutes he seemed not to breathe; presently he dropped on his knees, he raised the child's head, and pressed his lips to hers; the blood oozed from the pressure and ran a crimson stream down her neck, staining her silken hair; his lips were damp with her blood; his brain, already shaken, could no longer bear up against the shock, gasping for breath he fell senseless on the floor. Gradually, after some time, sensation returned, but when it did, his reason had left him. He sat up, and looked round the room with a vacant stare, till his eye rested on the body of the child; this recalled the lost thread of his thoughts; snatching the dagger from the wound, he sprang to his feet with a heart-freezing yell, as he brandished it aloft.
"Ha! ha! ha! fiends, are ye content? No! I come! I come! Shower down upon me the burning rafters of hell!--O Azora, you are avenged! God, how my heart burns, it is like a ball of fire in my bosom, and this red-tempered steel will fuse, ere it pierce it. Lo, I come!"
His hand was already raised to accomplish his purpose, when Ali, who had just entered, rushed forward and wrenched the dagger from his grasp, in doing which he stumbled against the child.
"Hassan! what mean you? Whose work is this? Are you mad?"
"Mad, did you say?" he yelled; "mad! aye, mad! mad! mad!" and he dashed himself on the earth and howled hideously in a paroxysm of fury. Ali perceived at once that his reason had given way, and supposed that he had destroyed his sister in the blindness of his rage. Leaving him to exhaust himself where he lay, Ali removed the body to the adjoining room, and having washed away the stains from the floor, he sat down to consider the best course to adopt to prevent harm to Hassan or himself on account of the crime of the former. He was fearful of exciting Hassan by asking an explanation; but from this he was saved by Hassan himself, who now rose slowly from the ground, and looked with a long searching glance round the room. His appearance was frightful; his turban had fallen off, exposing his shaven head; his pallid face, stained with blood, contrasted with his black moustaches and glittering eyes; the veins in his neck and temples were swollen to bursting,--his whole face distorted. The stout heart of the Arab could not divest him of a superstitious misgiving, as he looked on the figure of his friend; he, lately so calm, now the prey of insanity.