Jill suddenly sat forward, clasping one slim ankle across her knee in a slim hand, a position she knew perfectly well would rouse Hahmed to a frenzy, and spoke slowly and mockingly in English instead of the pretty lisping Arabic which always entranced him.

“You may lecture, and remonstrate, and admonish, which all comes to the same thing, until night falls, but you will never make me see eye to eye with you in this.  It is simply absurd to threaten that you will shut me in my apartments until I learn reason.  If you lock me in, or place guards about me, I will jump from the roof and gain my freedom by breaking my neck.  Why Jack Wetherbourne--oh------”

Hahmed had leant forward, and gripping her by the shoulders had very suddenly, and not over gently, jerked her to her feet, holding her by the strength of his hands alone, as she desperately tried to liberate herself.

“Let me go, Hahmed! let me go!  You are hurting me dreadfully.  You must not hurt me—­you must not bruise me.  Oh! you don’t understand!”

She struggled furiously and unavailingly, resorting at last to cruelty to gain her end.

“Let me go, Hahmed!  Take your hands away—­I—­I hate to feel them upon me!”

He let her go, pushing her away from him ever so slightly, so that she stumbled against the chair, cracking her ankle-bone, that tenderest bit of anatomical scaffolding, against a projecting piece of ornamental wood.

It was a case of injury added to insult, and she crouched back furious in her physical hurt as she tore the silken covering from her arms, where already showed faint bruises above the little tattoo mark showing itself so black against the white skin, and upon which she put her finger.

“Oh! who would have thought when you tattooed that, Jack——!”

But she stood her ground and shrugged her naked shoulders irritatingly when Hahmed crossed the dividing space in a bound with his hand upon the hilt of his dagger.

“Bi—­smi—­llah! what sayest thou?  This mark upon the fairness of thy arm which I have thought a blemish, and therefore have not questioned thee thereon—­sayest thou it is a dakkh, what thou callest a tattoo mark?  And if so what has it to do with the man whose name is unceasingly upon thy lips?”

Jill stood like a statue of disdain.

“What is the matter now, Hahmed?  Please understand that I will not tolerate such continual fault-finding any longer!  That is a tattoo mark of a pail of water—­you may not know that we have a rhyme in England which begins like this: 

    “Jack and Jill went up a hill
    To fetch a pail of water!”

Oh! shades of ancient Egypt, did you ever hear or see anything so pathetically absurd as Jill as she solemnly repeated the old doggerel.

“That makes no difference—­a pail of water or the outline of a flower—­did this man—­this—­this Jack make the mark upon thee?”