"I say when you first began to woo me," he continued, "I resisted for a time, for you are only a white woman, and not of our blood or our religion; but I felt at last that you had made me your slave, and once my love had turned to you, fate told me that you would be mine, and I gave way to my passion. Then you led me on till I declared my love, when you professed to cast me off, and I accepted the words; but they were words only. Fate said that I was to take to myself a wife from the invaders of my country, and do you think I was going to let the opposition of your friends, as you did, stand in the way?" He waited for her to reply, but she remained watchful and silent. "I knew all along," he went on, evidently to provoke her to speak, "that you only professed to reject me, and that you were waiting, as I was, the time when you would be mine; and though I grew daily more impatient, I was ready to wait for my reward. At last the time has come. Look at me well, my wife, for such you are; even the priests have studied, and found that a prince of my race was to marry a woman fair as the morning light." He took a step forward, and as she shrank back with a cry of horror, he stopped and laughed. "Why do you shrink away, little wife?" he said. "The time has passed now for that, and you should cling to me, and pay me for my patient waiting and my brave deed. But you were afraid of the water and wine, as if I should poison or drug you. Why should I? You are here--my wife--in my home amongst my slaves. It is foolishness to think that I should give you poison to drink--to you who love me so well. See here!" He walked quickly forward to where the wine was placed, and Helen watched him keenly as he poured out a cupful, smiled at her, and drank it slowly to the last drop. "Now," he said, smiling, "will you drink without fear? I will pour you out a cup. No; I will use this from which I drank. It is only your husband's, and you need not mind." He poured out a fresh cup of the palm wine; but as if from clumsiness shook the native bottle that contained the liquid. Helen did not perceive it; but the wine as he partook of it himself was clear; now it was thick and discoloured, a fact that would have been seen at once in a glass. She still kept aloof from him, with her mind actively at work, seeking some means of escaping from her enemy's hands, for she could not conceal from herself that appeals and violence would be equally in vain. She came to the full endorsement, then, of previous thoughts--that her sole hope of escape depended upon artifice: her womanly cunning must be brought to bear. She felt that she had mastered Murad before; why should she not now--by seeming to accept her fate? He would, she argued, doubtless submit to her wishes if she showed a semblance of accepting his suit, and in this spirit, as he pressed her once more to partake of the wine, she began to parley with him. "I do not drink wine," she said.