"Of course my first impulse was to run away, but at the next moment I saw that to do so would be to defeat your own scheme in going, and that as surely as it had been your duty to go into Cairo, it was mine to remain in Khartoum. But all the same I felt myself to be a captive—as surely a captive as any white woman who was ever held in the Mahdi’s camp—and it did not sweeten my captivity to remember that I had first become a prisoner of my own free will.
"If I am a captive I am under no cruel tyrant, though, and Ishmael’s kindness is killing me. I was certainly wrong about him in Cairo, and his character is precisely the reverse of what I expected. Little Ayesha tells me that during the night I lay unconscious her father did not sleep at all, but kept coming into the guest-room every hour to ask for news of me, and now he knocks at my door a dozen times a day, asking if I am better, and saying ’To morrow, please God, you will be well.’ It makes me wretched, and brings me dreadfully near to the edge of tears, remembering what I have done to him and how certainty his hopes will be destroyed.
"Naturally his people have taken his cue, and last night Black Zogal gathered up a crowd of half-crazy creatures like himself to say a prayer for me at the Saint’s house which is just outside my window.
"’Thou knowest our White Lady, O Father Gabreel, that she is betrothed to our Master, and that his heart is low and his bread is bitter because she is sick. Make her well if it please God, O Father Gabreel!’ Thus the simple-hearted children of the desert called down God’s spirit to their circle of fire for me, and after loud cries of ’Allah! Allah!’ going on for nearly an hour, they seemed to be content, for Zogal said—
"’Abu Gabreel hears, O my brothers, and to-morrow, please God, our sister will be well.’
"I had been reaching up in bed to look and listen, and when all was over I wanted to lay down my head and howl.
"The time has come for the people to start on their pilgrimage, but Ishmael insists upon postponing the journey until I have quite recovered. Meantime Zenoba is trying to make mischief, and to-day when the door of my room was ajar, I heard her hinting to Ishmael that the White Lady was not really ill but only pretending to be—a bit of treachery for which she got no thanks, being as sharply reproved as she was on the morning of your mother’s letter.