"Yes, for I’m a soldier’s daughter, and in my heart I’m a soldier’s wife as well, and I shouldn’t be worthy to be either if I didn’t tell you to do your duty, whatever the consequences to me."
"My brave girl!" he cried, clutching at her hand.
As they walked they encouraged each other.
"Yes, we are on the right road now, Gordon."
"Yes, we are doing better than running away."
"The train leaves Khartoum this evening, and I suppose they want to say farewell to me in the mosque at sunset.... You’ll be strong to the last and not break down when the time comes for me to go?"
"No, I’ll not break down ... when the time comes for you to go."
But for all her brave show of courage, her eyes were filling fast and the tears were threatening to fall.
"Better leave me now," she whispered. "Let me go back alone."
He was not sorry to let her go ahead, for at sight of her emotion his own was mastering him.
"Will she keep up to the end?" he asked himself.
As the hours of the day passed on, Helena became painfully aware that her courage was ebbing away.
Unconsciously Ishmael was adding to her torture. Soon after the midday meal he called on her to write to his dictation a letter which Gordon was to take into Cairo...
"One more letter, O Rani, only one, before our friend and brother leaves us."
It was to the Ulema, telling them of the change in his plans and begging them to be good to Gordon.
"Trust him and love him. Receive him as you would receive me, and believe that all he does and says is according to my wish and word."
Helena had to write this letter. It was like writing Gordon’s death-warrant.
Later in the day, seeing her idle, nibbling the top of the reed pen which she held in her trembling fingers, Ishmael called for the kufiah.
"Where is the kufiah, O Rani—the kufiah that was to disguise the messenger of God from his enemies?"
And when Helena, in an effort to escape from that further torture, protested that in Gordon’s case a new kufiah was not essential, because he wore the costume of a Bedouin already, Ishmael replied—
"But the kufiah he wears now is white, and every official in Khartoum has seen it. Therefore another is necessary, and let it be of another colour."
At that, with fiendish alacrity, the Arab woman ran off for a strip of red silken wool, and Helena had to shape and stitch it.