"Come, Betty," said Jim quickly. "We are going to clear out of this, you and I. Right now!"
He noted a slight restless stirring of Zoraida's foot and stepped to her side, his hand again on her arm.
"We are not through with you yet," he told her. "Miss Gordon will want some clothes."
"In her room," agreed Zoraida. "Come."
Had she delayed her answer the fraction of a second he might have followed her, suspecting nothing. But as it was he remarked on her eagerness; Zoraida was passionately set on treachery and he sensed it.
"No," he answered. "From here we go straight out into the open." Zoraida had yielded to the pressure on her arm as though to continue in her new role of implicit obedience. But now his distrust was wide awake. There may have been a slight involuntary stiffening of her muscles, hinting at rebellion; there was something which warned him in the look she sought to veil. "What clothes Betty needs you can give her. Here and now."
"Oh!" cried Betty, with a look of abhorrence and a shudder. "I couldn't——"
"It can't be helped," he retorted. And to Zoraida: "She'll want shoes and stockings."
The look he had then from Zoraida was one of utter loathing and at last of unhidden lust for his undoing. But after it she bestowed on him a slow contemptuous smile and again she obeyed. Her little shoes she kicked off; she drew off her stockings and he handed them to Betty.
"Zoraida goes barefooted at a man's command!" A first note of laughter was in Zoraida's voice. "What more? Am I to disrobe in a man's presence?"