She shuddered and clasped my left hand in both her own convulsively, pulling it down to her bosom.
"There can be only one thing, _effendim_," she whispered. "Do you not see the white bones bleaching in the sun?"
Throwing all my resolution into the act, I released my hand from her clasp, and, turning aside, sat down upon the box which served me as chair and table, too.
A thought had come to my assistance, had strengthened me in the moment of my greatest weakness; it was the thought of that Arab girl mentioned in Condor's letters. And a scheme of things, an incredible scheme, that embraced and explained some, if not all, of the horrible circumstances attendant upon his death, began to form in my brain.
Bizarre it was, stretching out beyond the realm of things natural and proper, yet I clung to it, for there, in the solitude, with this wildly beautiful creature kneeling at my feet, and with her uncanny powers of fascination yet enveloping me like a cloak, I found it not so improbable as inevitably it must have seemed at another time.
I turned my head, and through the gloom sought to look into the long eyes. As I did so they closed and appeared as two darkly luminous slits in the perfect oval of the face.
"You are an impostor!" I said in Arabic, speaking firmly and deliberately. "To Mr. Condor"--I could have sworn that she started slightly at sound of the name--"you called yourself Mahâra. I know you, and I will have nothing to do with you."
But in saying it I had to turn my head aside, for the strangest, maddest impulses were bubbling up in my brain in response to the glances of those half-shut eyes.
I reached for my coat, which lay upon the foot of the bed, and, taking out some loose money, I placed fifty piastres in the nerveless brown hand.
"That will enable you to reach the Little Oasis, if such is your desire," I said. "It is all I can do for you, and now--you must go."
The light of the dawn was growing stronger momentarily, so that I could see my visitor quite clearly. She rose to her feet, and stood before me, a straight, slim figure, sweeping me from head to foot with such a glance of passionate contempt as I had never known or suffered.
She threw back her head magnificently, dashed the money on the ground at my feet, and, turning, leaped out of the tent.