“Then it was only pity?”
“Was it? I knew your value in England.”
She paused, then added, in an almost light and much more impersonal voice:
“I think I may say that I’m a connoisseur of values. And I hate to see a good thing flung away.”
“I’m not a good thing. Perhaps I might have become one. I believe I was on the way to becoming worth something. But now I’m nothing, and I wish to be nothing.”
“I don’t wish you to be anything but what you are.”
“Once you telegraphed to me—‘May Allah have you in His hand.’”
“I remember.”
“It’s turned out differently,” he said, almost with brutality.
“We don’t know that. You came back.”