was a child.

"You do not understand the men of the East, or you forget that I am an
Oriental," he said.

A sudden idea struck her.

"Perhaps you are married, too?" she exclaimed.

"Of course I am married!"

His eyes narrowed, and his face began to look hard and repellent.

"It is not in our habits to discuss these things," he said.

She felt afraid of his anger.

"I didn't mean--"

She dropped her hands from his cloak.

"But haven't I a right?" she began.

She stopped. What was the use of making any claim upon such a man? What
was the use of wasting upon him any feeling either of desire or of
anger? What was the use? And yet she could not go without some
understanding. She could not ride back into the camp by the lake and
settle down to virtue, to domesticity with Nigel. Her whole nature cried
out for this man imperiously. His strangeness lured her. His splendid
physique appealed to her with a power she could not resist. He dominated
her by his indifference as well as by his passion. He fascinated her by
his wealth, and by his almost Jewish faculty of acquiring. His irony
whipped her, his contempt of morality answered to her contempt. His
complete knowledge of what she was warmed, soothed, reposed her.

But the thought of his infidelity to her as soon as she was away from
him roused in her a sort of madness.

"How am I to see you again?" she said.

And all that she felt for him went naked in her voice.

"How am I to see you again?"

He stood and looked at her.

"And what is to happen to me if he has found out that I have been away
from the camp?"

"Hamza will make an explanation."

"And if he doesn't believe the explanation?"

"You will make one. You will never tell him the truth."

It was a cold command laid like a yoke upon her.

"He can never know I have been here. To-night, directly you are gone, I
strike my tents and go back to Cairo. I do not choose to have any bad
affairs with the English so long as the English rule in Egypt. I am well
looked upon by the English, and so it must continue. Otherwise my
affairs might suffer. And that I will not have. Do you understand?"

She looked at him, and said nothing.

"We have to do what we want in the world without losing anything by it.
Thus it has always been with me in my life."

She thought of all she had lost long ago by doing the thing she desired,
and again she felt herself inferior to him.

"And this, too, we shall do without losin