Helen leant forward and looked straight into her enemy’s eyes as she answered slowly:
“No! I will not write that letter!”
Fell another silence, in which, whilst exercising the little control she was capable of, Zarah traced the embroidery upon the pillow and worked her cunning mind, and Helen sat still and silent, wondering what the answer to her refusal would be. Love made her brave, love made her ready for sacrifice, but she shivered involuntarily as she remembered the tales she had heard of the Arabian’s cruelty, rage and treachery, both at school and after.
Perfectly healthy in mind and body, she shuddered at the thought of mental or physical pain for others, did everything in her power to alleviate it, made every effort to avert it from them. She felt intuitively that danger threatened the man she loved, and she longed to ask the Arabian the meaning of her mocking smile as she lazily traced the embroidery with a hennaed finger.
Zarah was trying to come to a decision.
She had methods which, though hardly civilized, were extremely efficacious in bending the most obstreperous person to her way of thinking; she had also a fair knowledge of the Briton’s stubbornness and excessive altruism.
For some unknown reason Helen had suddenly become afraid for Ralph Trenchard. Why? She did not love him, because she neither blushed nor cast down her eyes when she mentioned his name, nor did she wear his portrait, after the sickly manner of her race, about her person.
Zarah loved the Englishman with all the violent, uncontrolled passion of her parentage, but her hatred for the calm English girl was almost as deep and as violent as that love, and to it was added a seething desire for revenge—revenge for her looks, her breeding, her gentle ways, but, above all, for the intolerable camaraderie which evidently existed between her and the white man.
If only she had known any sign of love, then would the revenge have been easy and subtle and of a surpassing cruelty, but her interest in the man seemed to be that of a friend and no more.
In fact, she seemed only to be interested in her surroundings, in the distant view of the red desert rolling in great billows as far as eye could see, and the golden sunshine which filled the room with its light and warmth. She watched Helen stretch slowly, shrug the over-warm coverlet from her shoulders and pull the cushions into a more comfortable position behind her shoulders; then, with the lightning quickness of a hawk, she leant suddenly forward and wrenched at a locket which had slipped from the silken garment Helen wore.