u not used me as you did, had you
not lent a ready ear to lies, that whelp my brother would never
have gone to such lengths, nor should I ever have afforded him the
opportunity."

She shifted on the cushions of the divan and turned her shoulder to him.

"All this is very idle," she said coldly. Yet perhaps because she felt
that she had need to justify herself she continued: "If, after all, I
was so ready to believe evil of you, it is that my instincts must
have warned me of the evil that was ever in you. You have proved to
me to-night that it was not you who murdered Peter; but to attain that
proof you have done a deed that is even fouler and more shameful, a
deed that reveals to the full the blackness of your heart. Have you not
proved yourself a monster of vengeance and impiety?" She rose and faced
him again in her sudden passion. "Are you not--you that were born a
Cornish Christian gentleman--become a heathen and a robber, a renegade
and a pirate? Have you not sacrificed your very God to your vengeful
lust?"

He met her glance fully, never quailing before her denunciation, and
when she had ended on that note of question he counter-questioned her.

"And your instincts had forewarned you of all this? God's life, woman!
can you invent no better tale than that?" He turned aside as two slaves
entered bearing an earthenware vessel. "Here comes your supper. I hope
your appetite is keener than your logic."

They set the vessel, from which a savoury smell proceeded, upon the
little Moorish table by the divan. On the ground beside it they placed
a broad dish of baked earth in which there were a couple of loaves and
a red, short-necked amphora of water with a drinking-cup placed over the
mouth of it to act as a stopper.

They salaamed profoundly and padded softly out again.

"Sup," he bade her shortly.

"I want no supper," she replied, her manner sullen.

His cold eye played over her. "Henceforth, girl, you will consider
not what you want, but what I bid you do. I bid you eat; about it,
therefore."

"I will not."

"Will not?" he echoed slowly. "Is that a speech from slave to master?
Eat, I say."

"I cannot! I cannot!" she protested.

"A slave may not live who cannot do her master's bidding."

"Then kill me," she answered fiercely, leaping up to confront and dare
him. "Kill me. You are used to killing, and for that at least I should
be grateful."

"I will kill you if I please," he said in level icy tones. "Bu