With eyes wild and hair dishevelled Helen Perowne sat crouched together as far from the Rajah as her means would allow.
“Why, Helen,” he said mockingly, and with a gleam of triumph in his eyes, as he half reclined against the bamboo wall, “how beautiful you look!” He made a movement as if to clasp her in his arms, but she sprang up with a cry of horror.
“What folly!” he said, laughing as he slowly changed his feet. “And you will not drink—you are afraid that I shall try to poison you. Don’t be afraid. Why should I now? I love you too well. When first you began to woo me—”
She burst into a piteous fit of sobbing, and then turned upon him her eyes full of misery and despair.
“That makes you more handsome!” he cried, excitedly. “Be angry with me; I love it! I will say that again. When you first began to woo me—”
It had not the intended effect, for Helen remained silent, watching him with dilated eyes, as if he were some tiger about to make a spring.
“I say when you first began to woo me,” he continued, “I resisted for a time, for you are only a white woman, and not of our blood or our religion; but I felt at last that you had made me your slave, and once my love had turned to you, fate told me that you would be mine, and I gave way to my passion. Then you led me on till I declared my love, when you professed to cast me off, and I accepted the words; but they were words only. Fate said that I was to take to myself a wife from the invaders of my country, and do you think I was going to let the opposition of your friends, as you did, stand in the way?”
He waited for her to reply, but she remained watchful and silent.
“I knew all along,” he went on, evidently to provoke her to speak, “that you only professed to reject me, and that you were waiting, as I was, the time when you would be mine; and though I grew daily more impatient, I was ready to wait for my reward. At last the time has come. Look at me well, my wife, for such you are; even the priests have studied, and found that a prince of my race was to marry a woman fair as the morning light.”
He took a step forward, and as she shrank back with a cry of horror, he stopped and laughed.