ting even in the lips he pressed
together.

"But don't you understand--" he blurted at last and broke off.

After all, he did not know this girl. If he swayed her judgment now,
and dragged her away, what life, what compensation could he offer
her? How did he know that she would not regret it? Would she be
happier in a world unknown?....

She had been brought up to this sort of thing. It was bred in
her.... Marriage was her inevitable game. This very charm she
exercised, this subtle, haunting invasion of his senses, what was
that but another proof of the harem existence where all influences
were forced to serve the ends of sex ...

And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general!

A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him. "Oh, well, if you
prefer this," he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain
in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon
him.

A girl who would let him kiss her one night--and on the next inform
him that she was giving herself to an unknown--an old Turk.... If
she could go like that, to some other's arms and lips ...

He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips
against his and then fling her away and say, "Oh, go to him now--if
you can!"

And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as
if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would
protect her against all the world.

He was divided and confused and blindly angry. He felt baffled and
frustrated. He was both aching and raging. And yet he was capable of
reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this
was undoubtedly the best thing for them both.

What else? For him? For her?

And yet his tongue went on stabbing her.

"If this is what you are determined to do--" he heard himself saying
hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality.

It was as if he had said, "If this, then, is what you are like! If
you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the
odalisque--If you will endure undesired love rather than face the
world--"

And she knew that was what he was saying to her. The injustice
brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat.... That he
should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice.... That
he should reproach, despise.... She had expected other entreaties
... protestations....

Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness.

But she did not stir. Not a line of her drooping draperi