e
replied, taking up the glass and sipping from it.

"Perhaps you won't like it," he suggested, watching her.

"If the Sahib gives it to me I shall like it," replied Saidie,
smiling at him over the delicate golden glass: it threw its light
upwards into her great gleaming eyes, and Hamilton kissed the
little hand that put the glass gently down on the table again.

Next after the fish came game and joints, course after course, more
food in that one meal than Saidie was accustomed to see for many
people for a week. Her own appetite was soon satisfied, and she sat
for the most part gazing at Hamilton, with her hands tightly locked
together in her lap: such a nervous delight filled her, such a
strange joy in knowing herself to be alive, to be possessed of a
beautiful body that by reason of its beauty was worthy the caresses
of a man like this; such a pure rapture animated every fibre, to
realise that it was in her power to give pleasure to him. With such
feelings as these no faintest hint of humiliation or degradation
could mingle. Saidie felt only that superb and joyous pride that
Nature originally intended the female to have in her surrender to
the male.

Her very breath seemed to flutter softly with joyous trepidation
and excitement as it passed over her lips. That she was to be his,
held in his arms, admitted to his embrace, seemed to her to be the
crown of her life, an honour given by special divine favour.

So must Rhea Sylvia have felt praying before her Vestal altar when
Mars first appeared to her startled eyes.

And Hamilton, with his keen, sensitive temperament, saw into her
mind clearly, and was fully aware of all this fervent adoration,
this intense passionate worship springing within her; and an
immense tenderness and reverence grew up within him, enclosing all
his passion as the crystal vessel encloses the crimson wine.

That she would not in her present state have shrunk or flinched
from a knife, if only his hand held it while it wounded her, he
knew quite well, and this wonderful voluntary self-sacrifice which
is the soul of all female passion appealed to him as a very holy
thing.

He knew that constantly this adoring love was poured out by women
for men, that almost every virgin heart beats with this same
worship as the first pain of love enters it, but ah! for how short
a time! How quickly the man tears open those eyes that would so
willingly be closed to his vileness! how soon come the infidelit