The wrangle lasted far into the night. At last, however, Yûsuf’s tone relented; they embraced, and he demanded the whole history of her ill-starred visit. But when he heard that men had been in the same room with her, his wrath redoubled. He beat his breast, he gnashed his teeth, he slapped her face, he paced the room denouncing her depravity.
“You are a brute!” she cried hysterically. “What harm if men were present? They did not come near me. I am not like your women—bred up to think of one thing only. Nor are Englishmen like you; they have respect for women. You are mad.”
Yûsuf was really mad, or seemed so, at that moment. He called her evil names in every tongue of which he had a smattering; and then in French, made childish by his rage, accused all Europeans of disgusting conduct.
“You deny it—hein? You are a liar, for the fact is known. We are not ignorant; we travel, and we have their books. What say you of their balls, their public dances, where women—nay, young virgins—choose what man they please, deserting husband or fiancé—empty names!—and dance and afterwards retire with him? The fact is known! The race is shameless—may God punish them! It is forbidden for us to cast up former things in marriage; but for the future I command you to forsake their filthiness. Go once again, and we shall know you worthless! Swear to renounce their company, or I will kill you!”
She sat up and confronted him with eyes of fire.
“Oh, brute!” she panted; “monster! rabid dog! I have had enough of you and your behaviour. I shall leave you. Tomorrow I shall go to the Consul and tell him how you struck me!”
“You shall not leave this room. I am your master.”
“Lock the door, block up the window, bind me, guard me, I still will find some way to let the Consul know. You shall be punished—I have sworn it. I have had enough, I say. I shall return to England.”
“Your talk is madness! Have a care! The punishment is death for one renouncing El Islam. Say, is that your meaning? Your own slaves will kill you!”
He put the question in bloodcurdling tones. But Barakah, dissolved in tears, made no rejoinder. A minute later he was once more at her side, imploring mercy, declaring her his light of life, his pearl of pearls. She still whimpered, “I shall tell the Consul.”
At last she fell into a troubled sleep.
When she woke again it was broad daylight; her coffee and a kind of pancake, which composed her breakfast every morning, steamed upon a tray beside her. Yûsuf had left the room. He came back presently, and, kneeling down, implored her to forget his madness. Enjoying her advantage in a listless way, she put on an exaggerated air of feebleness, and moaned:
“You were too cruel. I shall tell the Consul.”
At that he sprang up as a man demented and rushed out. No sooner was he gone than she relapsed to weeping, stricken by the curse of utter helplessness which underlay her pitiful pretence at pride. To have been beaten black and blue by Yûsuf would have been less ignominious than to let the Consul know she was unhappy. She had walked into this guarded life with open eyes, aware of the conditions which must thenceforth fetter her existence, boasting love for them. The least complaint, much more retreat, was thus impossible. Even in the heat of anger she had had no real intention to go back. Yûsuf had enraged her, the mob upon the previous day had frightened her exceedingly; but after all they were her chosen people, though so strange. She could never come to hate them as she did the English.
She rose at last with mind to go into another room. The door was locked. Upon her trying it a slave-girl shouted:
“It is forbidden to go out. Does my lady require anything that I can bring her?”
Barakah bit her lip and flushed as she turned back. Remembrance of her boasting yesterday before those Englishwomen rose to taunt her.
A little sunlight entered through the lattice like gold-dust. The gardener was at his work of watering—a lengthy process—assisted by his little son and by Ghandûr, Fatûmah playing round and teasing them. She heard their shouts and the familiar noises marking stages of the work; and by degrees, as she sat idle, listening, a measure of contentment came to her. Her troubles were of her own making; she had tempted Providence by flouting rules she had herself accepted. Henceforth, she vowed, she would be passive, of a boldness purely speculative, like Gulbeyzah.
It was not very long before the room door opened, admitting Yûsuf and his father, both with faces of concern. Saluting, in his courtly way, the Pasha offered an unqualified apology for everything that might displease her in the customs of the country. His son had told him of the trouble which had come between them. It arose from a simple and entirely pardonable misunderstanding, as he hoped at once to demonstrate to her well-known intelligence, if she would pay him the distinguished compliment of attending for a little moment to his explanation.
With that, he crossed one leg beneath him on the sofa, a compromise between the Eastern and the Western attitude, and began:
“I told you, if you will have the goodness to remember, when first the question of a marriage with my son arose between us, that we had stricter rules for the protection of our women than prevail in Europe. I also told you that, those rules once honoured, a woman had all freedom and consideration. I did wrong, I now perceive with infinite regret, not to explain to you precisely the reason and the nature of those rules; for, see, entirely owing to that fault of mine, you have transgressed them innocently. I should like, if you permit it,
