He stopped, but she made no answer. He began to wonder what she was doing, or if she had gone away and left him, as he devoutly hoped.
Unable to bear it any more he pushed the bandage from his forehead. No; there she sat silent and pained.
“I am married,” he remarked again, not knowing what else to say.
Then she looked up and asked: “You hate me, Rupert Bey?”
“Of course not,” he answered indignantly; “very much the reverse.”
“I thank you. Then you think me not nice, ugly?”
“Indeed, no. You are one of the most beautiful women I ever saw.”
“I thank you,” she said again, “I like hear you say that though you no mean it. Then you angry with me because you lose your foot and eye and get your people killed, though that old Bakhita’s fault, not mine.”
“Please don’t think so, Mea. It was not you or Bakhita, it was what you call Kismet.”
“Yes, I think it Kismet too. Kismet all round, Kismet here,” and she laid her hand upon her bosom. “Well, then, you not hate, you not think ugly, you not angry, and I—oh! I love,” and she put such tender passion into the word that the room seemed full of it—“and I great lady too in my own place, I, Tama, not dirt-born. Why you no take me? See now!” and she stood up before him and turned slowly round, “I not beautiful as you say, too small, too thin, but I not so bad! I make you good wife, I give you children, I love you always till I die. My people hate strangers, still they very glad you take me, they love you too, they praise you much, they think you bravest man in world; my emirs ask me this morning if I married to you yet as they want make feast.”