"Let me go," she muttered.
"Nay—a moment yet. You are not well."
"I am well."
"Indeed? Then wait a moment."
She rested where he motioned; he looked at her in smiling wonder.
She leaned on one of the cushioned couches, calm, motionless, negligent, giving no sign that she saw the chamber round her to be any other than the wooden barn or thatched cattle-sheds of the old mill-house; her feet were crossed, her limbs were folded in that exquisite repose which is inborn in races of the East; the warmth of the room and the long hours of sleep had brought the natural bloom to her face, the natural luster to her eyes, which earlier fatigue and long illness had banished.
He surveyed her with that smile which she had resented on the day when she had besought pity of him for Arslàn's sake.
"Do you not eat?" was all he said.
"Not here."
He laughed, his low humorous laugh that displeased her so bitterly, though it was soft of tone.