He shook his head.
"I would give you many things, but I am not one of those what the Englishman calls 'dam fools.'"
The practical side of his character, thus suddenly displayed, was like a cool hand laid upon her. It was like a medicine to her fever. It seemed for a moment to dominate a raging disease—the disease of her desire for him—which created, to be its perpetual companion, a furious jealousy involving her whole body, her whole spirit.
"Because you don't care for me," she said, after a moment of hesitation, and again running, almost in despite of herself, to meet her humiliation. "Every man who cares for a woman can be a fool for her, even an Eastern man."
"Why do I come here," he said, "two days through the desert from the Sphinx?"
"It amuses you to pursue an Englishwoman. You are cruel, and it amuses you."
Her cruelty to Nigel understood Baroudi's cruelty to her quite clearly at that moment, and she came very near to a knowledge of the law of compensation.
His eyes narrowed.
"Would you rather I did not pursue you?"
She was silent.