“You are telling a wicked untruth!” she exploded in English.  “And what’s more, you know you are.  You disgust me.  You know as well as I do I don’t care anything for money—­anything.  Only you’re a horrid, spoilt beast.  You think you can upset me, but you can’t.  I won’t have it, either from you or from anybody else.  It’s a shame, that’s what it is.  Now you’ve got to apologise to me.  I absolutely insist on it.  You aren’t going to bully me, even if you think you are.  I’ll soon show you the sort of girl I am, and you make no mistake!  Are you going to apologise or aren’t you?”

The indecorous creature was breathing as loudly as Mr. Gilman himself.

“I admit it,” said Musa yielding.

“Ah!”

“I demand your pardon.  I knew that what I said was not true.  I am outside myself.  But what would you?  It is stronger than I. This existence is terrible, on the yacht.  I cannot support it.  I shall become mad.  I am ruined.  My jealousy is intolerable.”

“It is!” said Audrey, using French again, more calmly, having returned to the twentieth century.

“It is intolerable to me.”  Then Musa’s voice changed and grew persuasive, rather like a child’s.  “I cannot live without you.  That is the truth.  I am an artist, and you are necessary to me and to my career.”  He lifted his head.  “And I can offer you everything that is most brilliant.”

“And what about my career?” Audrey questioned inimically.

“Your career?” He seemed at a loss.

“Yes.  My career.  It has possibly not occurred to you that I also may have a career.”

Musa became appealing.

“You understand me,” he said.  “I told you you do not comprehend, but you comprehend everything.  It is that which enrages me.  You have had experience.  You know what men are.  You could teach me so much.  I hate young girls.  I have always hated them.  They are so tasteless, so insufferably innocent.  I could not talk to a young girl as I talk to you.  It would be absurd.  Now as to my career—­what I said——­”

“Musa,” she interrupted him, with a sinister quietude, “I want to tell you something.  But you must promise to keep it secret.  Will you?”

He assented, impatient.

“It is not possible!” he exclaimed, when she had told him that she belonged to precisely the category of human beings whom he hated and despised.

“Isn’t it?” said she.  “Now I hope you see how little you know, really, about women.”  She laughed.

“It is not possible!” he repeated.  And then he said with deliberate ingenuousness:  “I am so content.  I am so happy.  I could not have hoped for it.  It is overwhelming.  I am everything you like of the most idiotic, blind, stupid.  But now I am happy.  Could I ever have borne that you had loved before I knew you?  I doubt if I could have borne it.  Your innocence is exquisite.  It is intoxicating to me.”

“Musa,” she remarked dryly; “I wish you would remember that you are in England.  People do not talk in that way in England.  It simply is not done.  And I will not listen to it.”  Her voice grew a little tender.  “Why can we not just be friends?”