servant, the Strangler, if my death could have lengthened a hair-breadth
the span of his being. But what matters to me his crime or his madness?
I loved him! I loved him!"

She bowed her veiled head lower and lower; perhaps, under the veil, her
lips kissed the lips of the dead. Then she said whisperingly,--

"Juma the Strangler, whose word never failed to his master, whose prey
never slipped from his snare, waits thy step on the road to thy home! But
thy death cannot now profit the dead, the beloved. And thou hast had pity
for him who took but thine aid to design thy destruction. His life is
lost, thine is saved."

She spoke no more in the tongue that I could interpret. She spoke, in the
language unknown, a few murmured words to her swarthy attendants; then the
armed men, still weeping, rose, and made a dumb sign to me to go with
them. I understood by the sign that Ayesha had told them to guard me on
my way; but she gave no reply to my parting thanks.




CHAPTER LXXXIX.

I descended into the valley; the armed men followed. The path, on that
side of the watercourse not reached by the flames, wound through meadows
still green, or amidst groves still unscathed. As a turning in the way
brought in front of my sight the place I had left behind, I beheld the
black litter creeping down the descent, with its curtains closed, and the
Veiled Woman walking by its side. But soon the funeral procession was