A Son of the Sahara Part 61

"The guards took her away last night," Leonora answered indifferently.

"She'll trouble you no more."

Hastily Pansy got to her feet, and went to the big door leading out of the harem. She knew what lay beyond; a large vestibule where, day and night, half a dozen eunuchs lounged.

Seeing Pansy on the threshold, brought them to their feet, barring her exit.

"I must see the Sultan," she said.

Although she made the request, she hardly expected to have it granted, for the Sultan came when he felt disposed.

"Lady, I'll inform the Sultan of your desires," one of the guards replied.

With that he left the vestibule.

Pansy waited, conscious of the servility and overwhelming desire to please that oozed from these menials.

Before long the messenger returned.

It appeared that the girl's wish was to be granted. With a negro on either side of her Pansy was taken through an intricate maze of corridors, past closed doors, open arches and Arabesque windows, to a further door that her escort opened.

Pansy found herself in a room that looked more like a sumptuous office than anything else, with a balcony that jutted over the lake.

At a large desk a man was seated in a white drill suit with a black c.u.mmerbund, who rose at her entry and smiled at her, as if the last week had never been; as if he were still Raoul Le Breton and there had been no unveiling.

"Well, Pansy, it's flattering to think you want to see me," he remarked.

Pansy did not waste any time before stating the reason of her visit.

"Is it true you're going to sell Rayma?" she asked in a horror-stricken tone.

The mere mention of her name made a savage expression flit across his face.

"What I'm going to do with her is my own concern."

"How can you be such a brute, such a savage, so abominably cruel?" she cried, distress in her voice.

"Do you know, my little slave, that you're the only person in the place who dare take me to task about my doings?" he remarked.

Pansy did not know, or care; her only desire was to save him from himself.

"I shall stay here until you premise not to sell her," she said tensely.

"If you stay until Doomsday, it won't worry me," he replied. "You must find some other threat."

Pansy could have shaken him for daring to poke fun at her, when her only desire was to keep him from slave-dealing.

"How can you even contemplate such a ghastly thing," she gasped.

"As what?" he asked in an unconcerned manner.

"Don't you know that slave-dealing is an abomination?"

"It may be in your country, but it isn't in mine."

"I can't bear to think of you doing anything so dreadful," she said in a strained voice.

He glanced at her, a soft, mocking light in his eyes.

"Should you like me any better if I didn't sell Rayma?"

"I should hate you if you did."

"I couldn't run such a risk a second time," he replied. "I'll send her back to the harem, and keep her there until I can find a suitable husband, if that'll please you better."

Pansy experienced a feeling of relief. The victory was easier than she had expected.

There was a brief pause. Then he said:

"So you're still returning good for evil, Pansy. Your power of forgiveness is astonishing. Rayma deserved punishment for her treatment of you."

"If anyone deserves punishment it's you," Pansy retorted.

"How do you make that out?"

"For trifling with her."

For a moment he was too astonished to speak.

"If you call that trifling, then I must have trifled with at least a hundred women in my day," he remarked at length.

"How can you stand there and say such dreadful things?" she gasped.

"There's nothing dreadful about it from my point of view."

Pansy said nothing. She just stared at him, as if at some fascinating horror.

Under her gaze he began to find excuses and explanations for himself and his behaviour.

"Don't you remember telling me in that letter of yours that you were not quite the same as other girls, putting that forward as a sufficient reason for breaking faith with me? Well, Pansy, I'm not quite the same as the other men you've known. To begin with, my religion is different. In my own small way I'm a king. I rule absolutely within a radius of more than a hundred miles round here. Then, I'm a millionaire, and my trading extends far beyond my kingdom, as far as St. Louis, in fact. And millionaires, more especially if they're men and unmarried, are feted and welcomed everywhere. And, like kings, millionaires can do no wrong. Then I'm half-Arab, half-French, which you must agree is a wild combination. Such a mixture doesn't tend to make a man exactly virtuous. I've done exactly what I liked, practically ever since I was born. Everybody, except my mother, did their best to spoil me. She was the only one who ever tried to keep me in order in any way, but she died when I was ten years old. At fourteen I was Sultan here in my own right. And no one ever dared, or troubled, to criticise my doings until you came along. And now you're expecting me to be a better man than ever Fate or nature intended me to be."

Pansy said nothing; she still looked at him, trying now to see his point of view.

"_I_ call 'trifling' what you've done with me. Promising to marry me and then drawing back. I've never trifled with you. And if you can believe such a thing, and if you'll try and see it in my light, I've been faithful to you. I never had a thought for another woman since the night you came into my life, until I learnt you were Barclay's daughter. Then I tried to hate you, and went back to my old life. But when you were brought to me, dead, as I thought, I knew I didn't hate you. And since that day, Pansy, there's been no other woman but you.

And you'll satisfy me for the rest of my life."

Pansy listened to him, trying to see things as he saw them, knowing she ought to be disgusted with him. Instead, she was intensely sorry because there had never been anyone at hand to check or train him, except a mother who had died twenty years ago.

But his speech brought her father's plight before her again. It seemed hardly feasible that the Sultan would have sent her letter to the man he desired to punish.