"You couldn't have done that. There would be your ... your wives to consider."
"I have no wife by my religion or yours."
"But that woman at your villa, wasn't she——" Pansy began.
"I've half a dozen women in one of my—houses; but none of them are my wives. You're the only woman I've ever asked for in marriage. You!"
He laughed in a cruel, hard way, as if at some devil's joke.
Pansy's hand went to her head—a weary, hopeless gesture.
He was beyond her comprehension, this man who calmly confessed to having a half a dozen women in one of his houses, to a woman he would have made his wife.
"I'm sorry," she said in a dreary tone, "but I can't understand you. I'd no idea there were men who seemed just like other men and yet behaved in this ... this extraordinary fashion."
"I'm not aware that my behaviour is extraordinary. Every man in my country has a harem if he can afford it."
Deliberately he put these facts before the girl in his desire to hurt and hate her as he hated her father. But the look of suffering on her face hurt him as much as he was hurting her. And he hated himself more than he hated her, because uprooting the love he had for her out of his heart was proving such a difficult task.