Again Ishmael misunderstood her weeping, and again a wave of compassion passed over him.
"It is possible I am wrong," he said. "I may be judging you unjustly. In that case tell me so, and I will kiss your feet. I will ask your pardon."
Sho could not speak. "This will end in some way," she thought.
"In the name of Heaven, speak! Tell me you do not love this man. Tell me I am wrong," he cried.
"No, you are not wrong," she said. "I do love him, and I am in despair. All you have said is true, but I cannot help it. I am a wicked woman, and my life by your side has been a deception from the first."
With that she burst into another flood of tears, and falling face downward on the angerib, she buried her head in the pillow.
"Allah! Allah!" said Ishmael, and all the blood in his body seemed to flush his heart. He was passing through the supreme phase of his agony—perhaps the cruellest that man can suffer—the agony of knowing that the woman he loved, the woman he worshipped, loved and worshipped another man.
In the cloud of maddening thoughts which sprang to his brain he imagined he read the mystery of Helena's conduct from the first. Remembering that she had called him a black man, the wild deep heart in him rose to a fever of jealous wrath.
"I see how it has been," he said. "The white man came to my tent. I welcomed him. I loved him. I trusted him. He was my brother, and he slept by my side. I made him free of my harem. I put my honour in his hands. And how did he repay me? By robbing me of the love that was my love, the heart that was my heart."
She tried to speak, to protest, but in a torrent of wrath he bore her down.