"Of what avail has your protection been to some of those others," she said; "those others whom HE has sought for?"
Alas! it had been of none, and I knew it well. I thought I grasped the drift of her words.
"You mean that if you speak, Fu-Manchu will find a way of killing you?"
"Of killing ME!" she flashed scornfully. "Do I seem one to fear for myself?"
"Then what do you fear?" I asked, in surprise.
She looked at me oddly.
"When I was seized and sold for a slave," she answered slowly, "my sister was taken, too, and my brother—a child." She spoke the word with a tender intonation, and her slight accent rendered it the more soft. "My sister died in the desert. My brother lived. Better, far better, that he had died, too."
Her words impressed me intensely.
"Of what are you speaking?" I questioned. "You speak of slave-raids, of the desert. Where did these things take place? Of what country are you?"
"Does it matter?" she questioned in turn. "Of what country am I? A slave has no country, no name."