but she was helpless, and he laughed softly as he kissed her lips, her
hair, her eyes passionately. He stood quite still, but she felt the
heavy beating of his heart under her cheek, and understood dimly the
passion that she had aroused in him. She had experienced his tremendous
strength. She realised from what he had told her that he recognised no
law beyond his own wishes, and was prepared to go to any lengths to
fulfil them. She knew that her life was in his hands, that he could
break her with his lean brown fingers like a toy is broken, and all at
once she felt pitifully weak and frightened. She was utterly in his
power and at his mercy--the mercy of an Arab who was merciless.

She gave in suddenly, lying quiet in his arms. She had touched the
lowest depths of degradation; he could do nothing more to her than he
had done. For the moment she could fight no further, she was worn out
and utterly weary. A numb feeling of despair came over her and with it
a sense of unreality, as if it were a hideous nightmare from which she
would wake, for the truth seemed too impossible, the setting too
theatrical. The man himself was a mystery. She could not reconcile him
and the barbaric display in which he lived with the evidences of
refinement and education that the well-worn books in the tent evinced.
The fastidious ordering of his appointments puzzled her; it was strange
to find in such a place. A dozen incongruities that she had noticed
during the day crowded into her recollection until her head reeled. She
turned from them wearily; she was too tired to think, too spent in mind
and body. And with the despair a kind of indifference stole over her.
She had suffered so much that nothing more mattered.

The strong arms around her tightened slowly. "Look at me," he said in
the soft slow voice that seemed habitual to him, and which contrasted
oddly with the neat, clipping French that he spoke. She shivered and