"Why," she asked faintly, "should he be your enemy?"
"Because he wants you himself, because, with me disposed of, he believes he can get what his unclean and avaricious heart covets as a snake charms a bird, because—"
Conscience rose with an effort to her feet. Her knees were trembling under her and her heart seemed to close into a painful strangulation.
"Stuart," she faltered, "if you think that my love can only be held against any outsider by your being at hand to watch it, you don't trust it as it must be trusted—and it isn't worth offering you at all."
"You've fallen under the spell of these Mad Mullah prophets," he retorted hotly, "until you can't trust yourself any longer. You've been inflamed into the Mohammedan's spirit of a holy war and you're ready to make a burnt offering of me and my love."
"Now," she said with a faintness that was almost a whisper, "you must go, whether you agree or not. You distrust me and insult me ... and I don't think ... I can stand many ... interviews like this."
But Farquaharson's curb had slipped. His anger was a frenzied runaway which he, like a madman, was riding in utter recklessness.
"If I go now," he violently protested, "if I am sent into exile at the behest of Tollman, my enemy, I go for all time, knowing that the woman I leave behind is not the woman I thought I knew or the woman I have worshiped."
Their eyes met and engaged in a challenge of wills in which neither would surrender; a challenge which had built an issue out of nothing. His burned with the moment's madness. Hers were clear and unflinching.
"If you can go like that," she said, and the tremor left her voice as she said it, "the man who goes isn't the man to whom I gave all my love and to whom I was ready to give my life."