He paused. Mrs. Travers, leaning on her elbow, shaded her eyes under the glint of suspended thunderbolts.
“You must hate us,” she murmured.
“Hate you,” he repeated with, as she fancied, a tinge of disdain in his tone. “No. I hate myself.”
“Why yourself?” she asked, very low.
“For not knowing my mind,” he answered. “For not knowing my mind. For not knowing what it is that's got hold of me since—since this morning. I was angry then. . . . Nothing but very angry. . . .”
“And now?” she murmured.
“I am . . . unhappy,” he said. After a moment of silence which gave to Mrs. Travers the time to wonder how it was that this man had succeeded in penetrating into the very depths of her compassion, he hit the table such a blow that all the heavy muskets seemed to jump a little.
Mrs. Travers heard Hassim pronounce a few words earnestly, and a moan of distress from Immada.
“I believed in you before you . . . before you gave me your confidence,” she began. “You could see that. Could you not?”
He looked at her fixedly. “You are not the first that believed in me,” he said.