"You must, I say," he insisted, almost angrily. "You must--or else
consent to be borne this very night to Asad's hareem--and not even as his
wife, but as his slave. Oh, you must trust me for your own sake! You
must!"
"Trust you!" she cried, and almost laughed in the intensity of her scorn.
"Trust you! How can I trust one who is a renegade and worse?"
He controlled himself that he might reason with her, that by cold logic
he might conquer her consent.
"You are very unmerciful," he said. "In judging me you leave out of all
account the suffering through which I have gone and what yourself
contributed to it. Knowihg now how falsely I was accused and what other
bitter wrongs I suffered, consider that I was one to whom the man and the
woman I most loved in all this world had proven false. I had lost faith
in man and in God, and if I became a Muslim, a renegade, and a corsair,
it was because there was no other gate by which I could escape the
unutterable toil of the oar to which I had been chained." He looked at
her sadly. "Can you find no excuse for me in all that?"
It moved her a little, for if she maintained a hostile attitude, at least
she put aside her scorn.
"No wrongs," she told him, almost with sorrow in her voice, "could
justify you in outraging chivalry, in dishonouring your manhood, in
abusing your strength to persecute a woman. Whatever the causes that may
have led to it, you have fallen too low, sir, to make it possible that I
should trust you.
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