And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her
coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her
little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap,
the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the
revelation.

What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some
one?

Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered
rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her
position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to
prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for
her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and
reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently
his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if
he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention,
had talked and danced with a man....

His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from
the thought.

And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed
her--!

She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy
desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that
disgrace....