Then he knelt to receive the benison of the woman he loved, smiled when
he felt the small hands upon his head and, leaping to his feet, swung
her up into his arms, covering her face with kisses.

"You beautiful darling!" he said, as he crushed her up, to the
derangement of her perfumed silks and satins and many jewels. "It's
just heavenly coming back to you, you dear, understanding mother."

The woman's heart leapt to battle, for in the last words, in the way
her beloved son looked down upon her in the tone of his voice, she knew
that, somewhere out in the world, he had received a hurt. She knew so
little of him, had only had him for such a little, little while under
the influence of her love and in the shelter of her heart, and she
loved him, her firstborn, with a love beyond words. Thinking to do the
best for him, and making the biggest mistake of all, beating down her
beloved husband's opposition, she had sent the boy to England, and in
the subsequent eight years had only seen him twice.

"He is of the East, Woman of my Heart! Behold, I have studied him,"
had said the Sheikh, all those years ago. "Let him be, else evil may
befall him."

But Jill, his beautiful wife, had insisted, and his love for her being
beyond telling, the great Arab had submitted to her wish.

For so it had been written.

And what can be the outcome of the tragic mixing of blood? Nothing but
pain.