Your heart,
O mistress, is luminous like the diamond, but also cold and hard
like the diamond."
"Youssouf!" cried she, in tones that made his heart leap--"Youssouf,
you accuse me of being hard and cold!"
For a moment a wondrous brilliancy shone in her eyes, then she
suddenly drew back from Youssouf, who stood there, motionless, in a
state of ecstasy. He stood gazing at her, entranced, seeming to hear
and see nothing. Not far from him, her face turned away, Sitta
Nefysseh stood still. He distinctly heard her hurried breathing, and
something like a low sob escape her breast. He listened to it as to
mysterious and wondrously sweet music.
Suddenly, she turned around, and advanced toward him with head erect
and proud bearing. "Kachef Youssouf, you have excited my indignation
by your unmerited reproaches! No one can say that Mourad Bey's widow
has a cold, hard heart. Mourad Bey knew otherwise; he knew that I
loved him; and if I have seemed, since his death, to have a cold,
hard heart, it is only because I have remained true to his memory.
Consider this, and do not dare to reproach me. Now go, and hasten
with my message to Bardissi!"
"I am going, mistress," said he, sadly. "But, when I have executed
your command, then I may return to my mistress with what speed my
horse can bear me, may I not?"
She remained silent, and let her eyelids, with their long, black
lashes, sink down over her beautiful eyes.
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