And this evening, as usual, she slipped unobserved
amongst the roses into the corner of the buttressed wall. A moment
after the boughs overhead parted, and the lithe Druze dropped down
noiselessly beside her. She put her gold braceleted arms round his
strong brown neck, and pressed her silken-covered bosom hard
against his rough cotton tunic. A great rush of rosy light flooded
all the sky for some minutes, then began to pale softly before the
approach of the lustrous purple dark.
In the palace a light behind one of the mushrabeared windows was
extinguished; there was the sound of the scurry of feet, and then a
long wail came out from the building, rending the pink-hued
twilight.
"Buldoula is dead!" remarked Dilama simply, as the lovers crouched
together between the wall and the roses. It meant nothing to her,
enclosed in the happy warmth of her lover's arms; death had no
meaning for her yet, hardly seventeen years' journey distant from
birth, and full of all the sap and great leaping fires of life.
Death was something so far away, so impossible to realise. It was
but a word to her--a casket enclosing nothing. Yet the death of
Buldoula was the embryo event in the womb of time from which was to
develop the whole tragedy of her own life.
"Buldoula is dead," she said again, carelessly, her rose-tipped
fingers smoothing the black sweeping arch of the man's brows.
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