Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/98

of admiration and desire, and instinctively she drew in her breath and clasped her right hand against her heart, as unhurryingly, he stepped up to her.

"Kurjan, daughter of Yar Zaddiq," he said very gently, "I am not an Afghan, though my dress is that of the Kabuli and though my lips have forgotten the proper twist and click of my native tongue in the many years I have spent away from home. I am a Kafiri, a hillman of hillmen and—" suddenly his voice peaked up to a high, throaty note, like the cry of an eagle circling above a frightened, fluttering song bird—"I love like a Kafiri!"

And, before she had time to run or defend herself, his great arms were about her, crushing her against his massive chest so that the long braids of her hair swept the ground behind her.

Very slowly, as if reluctantly, he released her.

"Go back to your father," he continued as she stood there, panting, a rush of unknown sensations, shyness, mixed with fear and a strange, tremulous, paining delight, surging through her body. "Tell him that a man has come to the River of Hate. Tell him that to-night I shall come to his house to demand you as my wife. And—as to you, Crusher of Hearts—tell yourself when you lie on your couch, that I love you—that there is a sweetness and strength in my soul which is known to your soul only!"

And he walked away, his saber clanking behind him; and he did not turn once to look back at her.

Kurjan did not know if it was the strange, sweet shyness which had come to her so abruptly, or fear of her father's terrible, raging temper which sealed her lips. At all events, she did not say a word of what had happened to her when she reached home. Courteously