She had some imagination, although she was not a highly or a very sensitively imaginative woman, and now she left her imagination at play. It took her with it into the heart of an Eastern house which was possessed by an Eastern master. Where was the house, in what strange land of sunshine? She did not know or care to know. And indeed, it mattered little to her--an Eastern woman whose life was usually bounded by a grille.
For she imagined herself an Eastern woman, subject to the laws and the immutable customs of the unchanging East, and she was in the harîm of a rich Oriental, to whom she belonged body and soul, and who adored her, but as the man of the East adores the woman who is both his mistress and his slave. For years she had ruled men, and trodden them under her feet. She had lived for that--the ruling of men by her beauty and her clever determination. Now she imagined herself no longer possessing but entirely possessed; no longer commanding, but utterly obedient. What a new experience that would be! All the capricious womanhood of her seemed to be alert and tingling at the mere thought of it. Instead of having slaves, to be herself a slave!
She moved a little on the divan. The heavy perfume that pervaded the room seemed to be creeping about her with an intention--to bring her under its influence. She heard the very faint and liquid murmur of the faskeeyeh, where the tiny gilded ball was rising, poising, sinking, governed by the aspiring and subsiding water. That, too, was a slave--a slave in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
Slowly she closed her eyes, in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
Here Baroudi lay, as she was lying, and smoked the keef, and ate the hashish, and dreamed.
He would never be the slave of a woman. She felt sure of that. But he might make a woman his slave. At moments, when he looked at her, he had the eyes of a slave-owner. But he might adore a slave with a cruel adoration. She felt cruelty in him, and it attracted her, it lured her, it responded to something in her nature which understood and respected cruelty, and which secretly despised gentleness. In his love he would be cruel. Never would he be quite at the feet of the woman. His eyes had told her that, had told it to her with insolence.
The gilded ball in the faskeeyeh, the slave covered with jewels in the harîm.
She stretched out her arms along the cushions; she stretched out her limbs along the divan, her long limbs that were still graceful and supple.