This mood was on him now.
Although the night called for nothing but love and caresses, none had fallen to her lot. Although she rested against him, she might not have been there for all the notice he took. He appeared to have forgotten her, as he gazed in a brooding, longing manner at the soft, velvety depths of the purple sky—sky as deeply, softly purple as pansies.
Rayma pressed closer to her lord and sultan, looking at him with love-laden, anxious eyes.
"Beloved," she whispered softly, "are your thoughts with some woman in Paris?"
With a start, his attention came back to her. In the starlight he scanned her little face in a fierce, hungry, disappointed manner. For the slight golden girl who now rested upon his heart brought him none of the contentment he had known when Pansy had been there.
"No, little one," he said gently. "I prefer you to all the women I met in Paris."
Her slim arms went round his neck in a clinging passionate embrace.
"Oh, my lord," she whispered, "such words are my life. At times I think you do not love me as you once did. You seem not quite the same. For, often, although your arms are around me, you forget that I am there!"
A bitter expression crossed his face.
He did not forget that she was there. Although he had come back to the desert girl he had once loved, it was not her he wanted, but the girl who had scorned and flouted him, his enemy's daughter. And he tried to forget her in the slim, golden arms that held him, with such desire and passion.