"So you went from one to bed to the next as you went from one country to the next."
It hurt her to hear his words, his voice tight with pain, but she had expected this.
"Daoud and I did not come together as man and woman at first," she said. "He did not want to be close to me."
He staggered back to the edge of the balcony as if she had struck him, and she was afraid he might fall.
He whispered, "Not at first! But you did—"
"Yes, we did," she said, thinking, Now he is going to draw that scimitar and kill me.
But the only movement he made was a slight wave of his hand, telling her to go on.
"I must tell you, Simon, that it was I who first fell in love with Daoud. There were moments when I hated him—when he killed your friend, for instance—but as I got to know him better and better I could not help loving him. I had been loved by an emperor and a king, but I had never met a man like Daoud. He had begun as a slave, and he became warrior, philosopher, poet, even a kind of priest, all in one magnificent person. You probably have no idea what I am talking about. You knew him only as the merchant David of Trebizond."
"I knew you only as Sophia Orfali."
"You may despise me now that you have learned so much about me, but the more you knew of him, the more you would have had to admire him."