"And is it your wish that I should please this Frenchman?"
"It is my wish."
"If I were a woman of your own race——" she began bitterly, but he interrupted her.
"If you were a woman of my own race there would be no question of it," he said coldly. "You would be for the eyes of no other man than me. But since you are not——" He broke off with an enigmatical jerk of the head.
"Since I am not you are less merciful than if I was," she cried miserably. "I could wish that I was an Arab woman."
"I doubt it," he said grimly. "The life of an Arab woman would hardly be to your taste. We teach our women obedience with a whip."
"Why have you changed so since this morning," she whispered, "when you told me that you trusted no one to climb to my balcony in the hotel but yourself? Are you not an Arab now as then? Have I become of so little value to you that you are not even jealous any more?"
"I can trust my friend, and—I do not propose to share you with him," he said brutally.
She winced as if he had struck her, and hid her face in her hands with a low cry.
His fingers gripped her shoulder cruelly. "You will do as I wish?" The words were a question, but the intonation was a command.