Bring me what you choose." Amrah's questions, and the voice in which she put them--low, sympathetic, and solicitous--were significant of an endeared relation between the two.

She laid her hand upon his forehead; then, as satisfied, went out, saying, "I will see." After a while she returned, bearing on a wooden platter a bowl of milk, some thin cakes of white bread broken, a delicate paste of brayed wheat, a bird broiled, and honey and salt.

On one end of the platter there was a silver goblet full of wine, on the other a brazen hand-lamp lighted.
The room was then revealed: its walls smoothly plastered; the ceiling broken by great oaken rafters, brown with rain stains and time; the floor of small diamond-shaped white and blue tiles, very firm and enduring; a few stools with legs carved in imitation of the legs of lions; a divan raised a little above the floor, trimmed with blue cloth, and partially covered by an immense striped woollen blanket or shawl--in brief, a Hebrew bedroom.
The same light also gave the woman to view.

Drawing a stool to the divan, she placed the platter upon it, then knelt close by ready to serve him.

Her face was that of a woman of fifty, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and at the moment softened by a look of tenderness almost maternal.