"And what is to happen to me if he has found out that I have been away from the camp?"
"Hamza will make an explanation."
"And if he doesn't believe the explanation?"
"You will make one. You will never tell him the truth."
It was a cold command laid like a yoke upon her.
"He can never know I have been here. To-night, directly you are gone, I strike my tents and go back to Cairo. I do not choose to have any bad affairs with the English so long as the English rule in Egypt. I am well looked upon by the English, and so it must continue. Otherwise my affairs might suffer. And that I will not have. Do you understand?"
She looked at him, and said nothing.
"We have to do what we want in the world without losing anything by it. Thus it has always been with me in my life."
She thought of all she had lost long ago by doing the thing she desired, and again she felt herself inferior to him.
"And this, too, we shall do without losing anything by it," he said.