“He is dead,” she said shiveringly.

“Dead?  He?...  Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who wanted you for a family in France!” The bey laughed gratingly.  “No, I assure you he is not dead—­I have not harmed a hair of his head.  He is alive—­only not with quite the widest range of liberty—­”

He broke off to laugh again.  “Ah, you disbelieve?” he said politely.  “Shall I send, then, for some proof—­an ear, perhaps, or a little finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?...  In five minutes it will be here.”

Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart.  If Ryder were alive and still in this man’s power—­

“You are horrible,” she said to him in a voice that was suddenly clear and unshaken.  “What is it you want of me—­fear and hate—­and utter loathing?”

Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting.  The Turk looked down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze.

“Not at all—­nothing at all like that, little dove with talons.  I want sweetness and repentance—­and submission.  And—­”

“You have a strange way to win them,” she said desperately.

“You have taken a strange way with me, my love!  Little did I foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning—­” He broke off.  “There are men,” he reminded her, “who would not consider a cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans.”

She was silent.

“But I,” he murmured, “I am soft hearted.”  He dropped on one knee before her and tried to smile into her averted face.  “I can never resist a charming penitent....  I assure you I am pliability itself in delicate fingers—­although iron and steel to a threatening hand....  If you should woo me very sweetly, little one—­”

She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch.  But she did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be.

“How can I know what you are?” she told him.  “You mock me—­you threaten to torture that man—­it would be folly not to think that you are deceiving me.  If you would only prove to me so that I could believe—­”

“If you would but prove to me so that I could believe—!  Prove that you are mine—­and not that infidel’s.  Prove that you bring me a wife’s devotion—­not a wanton’s indifference.”  He caught her cold hands, trying to draw her forward to him.  “Prove that you only pity him,” he whispered, “but that your love will be mine—­”

She felt as if a serpent clasped her.  And yet, if that were the only way to win Ryder’s safety—­if it were possible for her sickened senses to allay this madman’s suspicions and undermine his revenge—­

Quiveringly she thought that to save Ryder she would go through fire.

But the hideous, mocking uncertainties!  Her utter helplessness—­her lost deference....