It was impossible to believe that far beyond this desert city there lay a place called London, where she had been free as air, where she could come and go as she pleased, where she had dined and danced and lunched and visited. A world of dreams, remote, unreal, lost to her for ever, where she had been Pansy Langham, fêted and courted, with society at her feet. Now she was a sultan's slave, a chattel, her very life dependent on a barbaric ruler's whim.
On what punishment would be doled out to her for her attempt to get away, she next brooded. There had been such a set, determined expression on her captor's face when he brought her back to her prison.
The sound of someone coming towards her apartment broke in on her dreary reverie. It was close on midnight. She had never been disturbed at that hour before.
She looked up quickly.
The third door of her room was opening; one that had never opened before; a door the harem girls had told her led to the Sultan's private suite. And the Sultan, himself, was entering. The Sultan attired as she had never seen him before—in silk pyjamas.
Pansy started to her feet. She stood slight and white and silken-clad against the golden walls; her heart beating with a sickly force that almost choked her; her eyes wide with fear.
The end had come with a suddenness she was not prepared for.
He crossed to her side; tenderness and determination on his face; love and passion in his eyes.
For a moment there was silence.
"So, Pansy," he said at length. "You've tried to solve the problem your way. Now I'm going to solve it mine. You've fought against love quite long enough, against yourself and against me. I'm going to end the fight between us. To-night, my little slave, you sleep within my arms and learn all that love means."