Grim avoided her.
She was reduced to questioning others, edging the little Bishareen alongside each in turn.

She seemed no longer able to suffer the close confinement of the _shibriyah,_ but endured the scorching sun and desert flies with less discomfort than the rest of us betrayed, camels included.
"What will he do?
Is he mad?
Does he think that the Lion of Petra is a camel to be managed with a rope and a stick?
"I have given him his chance; because of my words men already fear him.

Why doesn't he plunder, then, and run to his own home?
Why doesn't he talk with me and let me tell him what to do next?
I know all these people--all their villages--everything!" "All women know too much, yet never what is needful," Ali Baba answered.
He was frankly jubilant.

Son and grandson of robbers by profession, father and grandfather of educated thieves, life meant lawlessness to him, and he could see nothing but honest pleasure and the chance of profit in Grim's predicament.

He loved Grim, as all Arabs do love the foreigner who understands them, deploring nothing except that unintelligible loyalty to a Western code of morals that according to Ali Baba's lights consisted of pure foolishness.