He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimée looked down with a sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily into submission....
It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy or unhappy. He had decided on the match—perhaps he had foreseen her protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her entreaties!—and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings.
After all her hopes! After all he had promised!
But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, and initiated her into foreboding.
"Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of course, but after all you will find it is for the best—much for the best—"
His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his house."
A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away, she thought.
It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do but she knew that she would endure it.
And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to receive such a revolting bride.
Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair.