"Well?" His voice was hard and uncompromising, and the flash of his
eyes was like the tiger's in the Indian jungle.
She set her teeth to keep down the old paralysing fear.
"I will do what you want. I will do anything you want, only be kind to
me, Ahmed," she whispered unsteadily. She had never called him by his
name before; she did not even know that she had done so now, but at the
sound of it a curious look crossed his face, and he drew her into his
arms with hands that were as gentle as they had been cruel before. She
let him lift her face to his, and met his searching gaze bravely.
Holding her look with the mesmerism that he could exert when he chose,
he read in her face her final surrender, and knew that while it pleased
him to keep her he had broken her utterly to his hand. A strange
expression grew in his eyes as they travelled slowly over her. She was
like a fragile reed in his strong grasp that he could crush without an
effort, and yet for four months she had fought him, matching his
determination with a courage that had won his admiration even while it
had exasperated him.
He knew she feared him, he had seen terror leap
into her flickering eyes when she had defied him most. Her defiance and
her hatred, which had piqued him by contrast with the fawning adulation
to which he had been accustomed and which had wearied him infinitely,
had provoked in him a fixed resolve to master her. Before he tired of
her she must yield her will to him absolutely. And to-night he knew
that the last struggle had been made, that she would never oppose him
again, that she was clay in his hands to do with as he would. And the
knowledge that he had won gave him no feeling of exultation, instead a
vague, indefinite sense of irritation swept over him and made him swear
softly under his breath. The satisfaction he had expected in his
triumph was lacking and the unaccountable dissatisfaction that filled
him seemed inexplicable. He did not understand himself, and he looked
down at her again with a touch of impatience. She was very lovely, he
thought, with a strange new appreciation of the beauty he had
appropriated, and very womanly in the soft, clinging green dress. The
slim, boyish figure that rode with him had a charm all its own, but it
was the woman in her that sent the hot blood racing through his veins
and made his heart beat as it was beating now. His eyes lingered a
moment on her bright curls, on her dark-fringed, pleading eyes and on
her bare neck, startlingly white against the jade green of her gown,
then he put her from him.