Her hair hung loose, in gleaming black strands reaching almost to her waist, and her head was circled by a thin tiara of gold and pearls, supporting the large green emerald that always hung suspended in the center of her forehead--even when she made love. The gold she wore--long bracelets at her wrists and upper arms, swinging earrings, even tiny bells at her ankles--seemed to excite her in a way Hawksworth could never understand. Her eyes and eyebrows were kohl-darkened and her lips carefully painted a deep red, matching the color of her fingernails and toenails. And as always she had dyed her palms and the soles of her feet red with henna. Four different strands of pearls hung in perfect array beneath her transparent blouse, glistening white against her delicate, amber-tinted skin. He noticed, too, that her nipples had been rouged, and told himself this was the only thing about her that recalled the women in London. "Tonight your thoughts were far away, my love. Do you weary of me so soon?" She laid aside the _rome-chauri_, the rubber ring impregnated with powdered hair that she often asked him to wear for her, then took a vial of rose attar from beside the couch and dabbed herself absently along the arms. "Tell me the truth. Are you now beginning to recoil from women, like so many bragging and posturing men I've known, and to long for a boy who fears to seek his own pleasure? Or a subservient _feringhi _woman whose parts are dry from lack of desire?" Hawksworth studied her for a moment without replying. In truth he did not know what to say. Your nightly visits to this couch have been the most astonishing experience of my life. To imagine I once thought being with the same woman night after night would eventually grow monotonous. But you always come here as someone different, always with something new. You play on my senses like an instrument--with touch, with scent, with tongue. Until they seem to merge with my mind. Or is it the reverse? But you're right when you say the mind must surrender itself first. When that's done, when the mind is given up to the body, then you somehow forget your own self and think only of the other. And eventually there grows a union of pleasure, a bond that's intense, overwhelming. But tonight he could not repress his vagrant mind. His feeling of failure churned too deep. It had stolen his spirit. Day after tomorrow the _Discovery_ weighs anchor, he told himself, with half the cargo we'd planned and twice the men she needs, while the _Resolve_ slowly breaks apart on a sandbar. I've failed the Company . . . and myself. And there's nothing that can be done. Kali, dear Kali. The woman I really want to be with tonight is Shirin. Why can't I drive her from my mind? Half the time when you're in my arms, I pretend you're her. Do you sense that too?