“Ferez!” Thessalie’s young figure stiffened and the colour flamed in her cheeks.
“You leopardess!” he repeated, every tooth a-grin again with rage, “you misbegotten slut of a hunting cheetah! So thees is ’ow you strike!... Ver’ well. Yas, I see ’ow it ees you strike at——”
“Ferez!” she cried. “Listen to me!”
“I ’ear you! Allez!”
“Ferez Bey! I am not afraid of you!”
“Ees it so?”
“Yes, it is so. I never have been afraid of you! Not even there on the deck of the Mirage, that night when you tapped the hilt of your Kurdish knife and spoke of Seraglio Point! Nor when your scared spy shot at me in the corridor of the Tenth Street house; nor afterward at Dragon Court! Nor now! Do you understand, Eurasian jackal! Nor now! Anybody can see what Heruli whelped you! What are you doing in America? Kassim Pasha is your den, where your rayah loll and scratch in the sun! It is their Keyeff! And yours!”
She took a quick step toward him, her eyes flashing, her white hand clenched:
“Allah Kerim—do you say? El Hamdu Lillah! Do you take yourself for the muezzin of all jackals, then, howling blasphemies from some minaret in the 381 hills? Do you understand what they’d do to you in the Hirka-i-Sherif Jamesi? Because you are nothing; do you hear?—nothing but an Eurasian assassin! And Moslem and Christian alike know where you belong among the lost pariahs of Stamboul!”
The girl was utterly transfigured. Whatever of the Orient was in her, now blazed white hot.