With the single slave he reached Bostra in safety with the merchandise,
and having concluded his barter very successfully, and retaining in his
mind many impressions of that crowded city, returned to Mecca by the same
desert route. Meisara, the slave, relates (in what is doubtless a later
addition) of the fierce noonday heat that beset the travellers, and how,
when Mahomet was almost exhausted, two angels sat on his camel and
protected him with their wings. When they reached Mecca, Khadijah sold
the merchandise and found her wealth doubled, so careful had Mahomet been
to ensure the prosperity of his client, and before long love grew up in
her heart for this tall, grave youth, who was faithful in small things as
well as in great.

Khadijah had been much sought after by the men of Mecca, both for her
riches and for her beauty, but she had preferred to remain independent,
and continued her orderly life among her maidens, attending to her
household, and finding enough occupation in the supervision of her many
mercantile ventures. She was about forty, fair of countenance, and gifted
with a rich nature, whose leading qualities were affection and sympathy.
She seems to have been pre-eminently one of those receptive women who are
good to consult for the clarification of ideas. Her intelligence was
quick to grasp another's thought, if she did not originate thought within
herself. She was a woman fitted to be the helper and guide of such a man
as Mahomet, eager, impulsive, prone to swiftly alternating extremes of
depression and elation. A subtle mental attraction drew them together,
and Khadijah divined intuitively the power lying within the mind of this
youth and also his need of her, both mentally and materially, to enable
him to realise his whole self. Therefore as she was the first to awaken
to her desire for him, the first advances come from her.