“I love thee,” Zarah was saying softly, looking up at the man she loved with love-filled eyes. “I love thee, R-ralph Tr-r-enchar-r-d. I have loved thee ever since I lay against thy heart so many, many moons ago. I will give up my home, my people, I will name Al-Asad as ruler in my stead, I will follow thee upon the path of thy choice, to the country that should please thee. I will wait upon thee, serve thee, devote myself to thee, if thou wilt give up the other woman. I love thee.”
“I have already told you, Zarah, that I do not love you, could never love you.” Ralph Trenchard, loathing the scene, spoke curtly, and stepped back quickly as Zarah flung herself at his feet. “Do get up,” he added in English, as he tried to loosen her grasp upon his knees. “If only you knew how we English loathe scenes like this, and what we think of hysterical, unbalanced people!”
She sat back on her heels, lifting her hands in supplication.
“I offer you Helen R-raynor-r’s freedom if you will stay with me. I do not want to keep her. Let her go back to her own country. She is young; she will forget; she does not know what love is. Besides, I fear my slave. He is handsome; he, too, is young; he wishes to take a wife. I will send Helena safely away from him if you will stay with me.”
Trenchard showed no sign of the horror of the fate in store for Helen; he spoke quite calmly, slowly, almost indifferently.
“You will not gain anything if you hurt Helen. If she dies I die; if you try to harm her she will find a means of killing herself, and I shall kill myself. Not because of my love for her—our kind of love is higher than suicide, it endures—but only so that you shall find no pleasure in her death.”
He pulled her hands apart and stepped back as she sprang to her feet. She failed to understand that, living or dead, she was no more to the man than one of the birds in its cage, and played what she mistakenly believed to be her trump card.
“Then I will kill myself, R-r-alph Tr-renchar-r-d.” She choked with rage, the r’s in the English words rolling like little drums. “And you will never forget that upon your head will lie the death of a woman, never be able to wipe out the picture of my broken body lying amongst the rocks.” She ran close up to him, shaking with the unseemly rage of the uncontrolled woman. “I go to my death.” She pointed through the doorway, striking a most dramatic attitude, whilst watching for a sign of interest in her proceedings in the man’s indifferent face. “To my death!” she screamed as she saw none, and fled through the doorway, missing the astounded Nubian by an inch.
She stopped upon the edge of the very steep incline and listened for the sound of footsteps hastening to her rescue. At the absence of all sound she looked over her shoulder, to see Ralph Trenchard, with his back to her, lighting a cigarette. She tore back into the room with the last shred of her restraint gone and swung him round by the arm.
“Oh, you didn’t do it?” He looked her straight in the eyes. “We have women like you in England, never very young or very pretty, who, verging upon the sere and yellow, and with nothing to fill their days or occupy their minds, try to coerce the people they love by threats of suicide. They never get what they want, either. The slightest chain frets love, real love, you know. You can’t inspire love just because you keep the person you love, but who doesn’t love you, in the same house with you. You can’t hold love by cooking or serving. Love, real love, will thrive on a crust offered by the one loved, but will sicken at the sight of a basket of sweetmeats offered by anyone else.” He had no intention of giving her the slightest cause to hope by offering her any sympathy in her tantrums. He added coldly, cruelly, as he turned from her: “It’s rather a pity these silly, hysterical women don’t carry out their threat of suicide; the world would be no loser by their death.”