He met her glance fully, never quailing before her denunciation, and when she had ended on that note of question he counter-questioned her.
“And your instincts had forewarned you of all this? God’s life, woman! can you invent no better tale than that?” He turned aside as two slaves entered bearing an earthenware vessel. “Here comes your supper. I hope your appetite is keener than your logic.”
They set the vessel, from which a savoury smell proceeded, upon the little Moorish table by the divan. On the ground beside it they placed a broad dish of baked earth in which there were a couple of loaves and a red, short-necked amphora of water with a drinking-cup placed over the mouth of it to act as a stopper.
They salaamed profoundly and padded softly out again.
“Sup,” he bade her shortly.
“I want no supper,” she replied, her manner sullen.
His cold eye played over her. “Henceforth, girl, you will consider not what you want, but what I bid you do. I bid you eat; about it, therefore.”
“I will not.”
“Will not?” he echoed slowly. “Is that a speech from slave to master? Eat, I say.”
“I cannot! I cannot!” she protested.