“A slave may not live who cannot do her master’s bidding.”
“Then kill me,” she answered fiercely, leaping up to confront and dare him. “Kill me. You are used to killing, and for that at least I should be grateful.”
“I will kill you if I please,” he said in level icy tones. “But not to please you. You don’t yet understand. You are my slave, my thing, my property, and I will not suffer you to be damaged save at my own good pleasure. Therefore, eat, or my Nubians shall whip you to quicken appetite.”
For a moment she stood defiant before him, white and resolute. Then quite suddenly, as if her will was being bent and crumpled under the insistent pressure of his own, she drooped and sank down again to the divan. Slowly, reluctantly she drew the dish nearer. Watching her, he laughed quite silently.
She paused, appearing to seek for something. Failing to find it she looked up at him again, between scorn and intercession.
“Am I to tear the meat with my fingers?” she demanded.
His eyes gleamed with understanding, or at least with suspicion. But he answered her quite calmly—“It is against the Prophet’s law to defile meat or bread by the contact of a knife. You must use the hands that God has given you.”
“Do you mock me with the Prophet and his laws? What are the Prophet’s laws to me? If eat I must, at least I will not eat like a heathen dog, but in Christian fashion.”
To indulge her, as it seemed, he slowly drew the richly hilted dagger from his girdle. “Let that serve you, then,” he said; and carelessly he tossed it down beside her.
With a quick indrawn breath she pounced upon it. “At last,” she said, “you give me something for which I can be grateful to you.” And on the words she laid the point of it against her breast.