"Bring me the girl," he commanded.
The officers glanced at one another. Then one knelt before the Sultan.
"The instructions were carried out," he said. "But the English lady is dead."
There was a moment of tense silence. A feeling of someone fighting against an incredible truth.
Pansy dead! Impossible!
The Sultan sat as if turned into stone. The contretemps was one he had never anticipated.
"Dead," the echoes whispered at him mockingly through the silk-draped tent. "Dead," they sighed unto themselves as if in dire pain.
And that one tragic word stripped love of its garment of hate, and set it before him, alive and vital.
The tent suddenly became charged with suffering, and the feeling of a fierce, proud heart breaking.
"Dead!" the Sultan repeated in a hoarse, incredulous voice. "Then Allah have pity on the man who killed her, for I shall have none."