should be repeated. He had overreached
himself indeed. Despair settled down upon him, a full consciousness of
the horrible thing he had done, which seemed now so irrevocable. In his
silent anguish he almost conceived that he had mistaken his feelings for
Rosamund; that far from hating her as he had supposed, his love for her
had not yet been slain, else surely he should not be tortured now by the
thought of her becoming Asad's prey. If he hated her, indeed, as he had
supposed, he would have surrendered her and gloated.

He wondered was his present frame of mind purely the result of his
discovery that the appearances against him had been stronger far than
he imagined, so strong as to justify her conviction that he was her
brother's slayer.

And then her voice, crisp and steady, cut into his torture of
consideration.

"Why did you deny him?"

He swung round again to face her, amazed, horror-stricken.

"You understood?" he gasped.

"I understood enough," said she. "This lingua franca is none so
different from French." And again she asked--"Why did you deny him?"

He paced across to her side and stood looking down at her.

"Do you ask why?"

"Indeed," she said bitterly, "there is scarce the need perhaps. And yet
can it be that your lust of vengeance is so insatiable that sooner than
willingly forgo an ounce of it you will lose your head?"

His face became grim again. "Of course," he sneered, "it would be so
that you'd interpret me."

"Nay. If I have asked it is because I doubt."

"Do you realize what it can mean to become the prey of Asad-ed-Din?"

She shuddered, and her glance fell from his, yet her voice was composed
when she answered him--"Is it so very much worse than becoming the prey
of Oliver-Reis or Sakr-el-Bahr, or whatever they may call you?"

"If you say that it is all one to you there's an end to my opposing
him," he answered coldly. "You may go to him. If I resisted him--like a
fool, perhaps--it was for no sake of vengeance upon you. It was because
the thought of it fills me with horror."

"Then it should fill you with horror of yourself no less," said she.

His answer startled her.

"Perhaps it does," he said, scarcely above a murmur. "Perhaps it does."

She flashed him an upward glance and looked as if she would have
spoken. But he went on, suddenly passionate, without giving her time
to interrupt him. "O God! It needed this to show me the vileness of the
thing I have done. Asad has no