She flung out her hands appealingly. "I want to stay, Ahmed! I love
you!" she panted, desperate--for she knew his obstinate determination,
and she saw her chance of happiness slipping away.
He did not move or look at her, and his brows drew together in the
dreaded heavy frown. "You don't know what you are saying. You don't
know what it would mean," he replied in a voice from which he had
forced all expression. "If you married me you would have to live always
here in the desert. I cannot leave my people, and I am--too much of an
Arab to let you go alone. It would be no life for you. You think you
love me now, though God knows how you can after what I have done to
you, but a time would come when you would find that your love for me
did not compensate for your life here. And marriage with me is
unthinkable. You know what I am and what I have been. You know that I
am not fit to live with, not fit to be near any decent woman. You know
what sort of a damnable life I have led; the memory of it would always
come between us--you would never forget, you would never trust me. And
if you could, of your charity, both forgive and forget, you know that I
am not easy to live with. You know my devilish temper--it has not
spared you in the past, it might not spare you in the future. Do you
think that I could bear to see you year after year growing to hate me
more? You think that I am cruel now, but I am thinking what is best for
you afterwards. Some day you will think of me a little kindly because I
had the strength to let you go. You are so young, your life is only just
beginning. You are strong enough to put the memory of these last months
out of your mind--to forget the past and live only for the future. No
one need ever know. There can be no fear for your--reputation. Things
are forgotten in the silence of the desert. Mustafa Ali is many hundreds
of miles away, but not so far that he would dare to talk. My own men
need not be considered, they speak or are silent as I wish. There is
only Raoul, and there is no question of him. He has not spared me his
opinion. You must go back to your own country, to your own people, to
your own life, in which I have no place or part, and soon all this will
seem only like an ugly dream."