"You will not stay with me," returned Hamilton quietly. His face was very white, his eyes had become black as they looked at her. One hand played idly with a paper-knife on his table.
"And a nice scandal there'll be when I go to stay at the hotel here, and it's known I'm your wife, and you are living out in the desert with a woman from the bazaar!"
"The fear of scandal has long since ceased to regulate my life," answered Hamilton calmly. "Be good enough to make your interview short; I have a great deal of work to-day."
"You are a devil!" replied the woman, white, too, now with impotent rage, "to desert your own wife for that filthy native woman. I—"
But Hamilton had sprung to his feet; his face was blazing; he seized his wife's wrists in both hands.
"Be quiet," he said, in a low tone of such fury that she cowered beneath it. "One word more and I shall kill you; do you understand?"
Then he raised one hand and brought it down on his gong. Instantly two stalwart, bronze giants, his chuprassis, entered the room and stood by the door.
"Take this woman out, and keep her out," he said to them. "Never let her in again. She annoys me."
The chuprassis put their hands to their foreheads, and then impassively approached the Englishwoman. She looked at her husband wildly as they took her arms.
"Frank! you will not surely—" she expostulated. "Your own wife!" and she struggled to release her arms.