"Where do you come from, sister, for your skin is whiter than mine?"
Pansy did not answer Leonora's question. She was wondering herself where she came from. From another world, it seemed.
It was incredible that she, Pansy Langham, could be a slave in a Sultan's harem, garbed as these other slave girls were. Incredible that only that afternoon she had been playing tennis with Raoul Le Breton, as she might have played with any man in her own place in England.
What ages ago it was! Yet perhaps it was only an hour. Like a beautiful dream that had vanished.
There was no Raoul Le Breton. No big, masterful man whom she had had to love, in spite of everything. There was only this barbaric Sultan who hated her father. Who, because she refused to marry him, had sent her to this strange room. His harem!
And she was his slave! She Pansy Langham, who had never obeyed any will except her own.
Her hands clenched.
How she hated him! He was so supremely master.
Any moment he might come to pick whichever of his slaves he fancied. And—he might pick her.
The ignominy of it! Just to be a man's chattel. And, hitherto, all men had been her abject and willing slaves.