“Cannot, Hugh?  But, my dear, what is the matter?  You will have to, some day, you know.  You are your father’s eldest son,” answered the woman, who, wrapped in perfect love and happiness, had never given a thought to the far-reaching effects of her marriage with the Arabian.  “Dear son, there are so many beautiful, cultured, gentle women here and at home--I mean in England--you------”

“Mother, please!  Oh, Mother, you don’t understand—­dear heavens! you don’t understand.  Listen—­and, how I wish my father, whom I honour, were here to comfort you.  Forgive me, dear, forgive me for the pain I must cause you------”

And the woman went white to the lips under a sudden blinding flash of understanding and her proud eyes dropped to the hands clenched in her lap.

“I want to marry, Mother of mine.”  He spoke in the Arabian tongue, which, is so atune to love, “for behold love in the space of an hour has grown within me.  The floods of love drown me, the full-blossomed trees of passion throw their shade upon the surging waters, and, behold, the shade is that of tenderness.  From the midst of the flood where I am like to drown, I stretch my arms towards the rocky shore where stands, looking towards me, the desire of my soul.  Behold, my eyes have seen her, and, behold, she is white, with hair like the desert at sunset, and eyes even as the pools of Lebanon.  She is as a rod to be bent, and as a vase of perfume to be broken upon a night of love.  And I love her—­her—­out of all women—­a doe to be hunted at dawn, a mare to be spurred through the watches of the night------”

“Hugh!”

“I love her as my father loved you—­my father, of whom I am the eldest son—­son of a highborn father, son of a highborn mother—­outcast—­outcast!”

“For pity’s sake, Hugh, stop!”

But the storm swept on, tearing the veil from the woman’s eyes.

“Behold, I care not for the plucking of garden blossoms, therefore are the beautiful, docile women of the East not for me, and the thorns upon the hedge of convention defied, the barbed wires of racial distinction keep me from the hedgerow flower, born of the wind and the sky and the summer heat, which I covet.

“Among men I am nothing; I may not claim equality with the scavenger of the Western streets; or with the donkey-boys of the Eastern bazaar.  Here I am served with fear and servility, being a man of riches; across the waters, I may sun myself in the smiles of women as long as I have no desire to wed.”  He suddenly seized the woman, holding her in a grip of iron which left great bruises on her arms.  “Do you know what she called me, Mother?—­that harlot of a line of noblemen—­what she flung in my teeth because, seeing in her a woman of the streets hidden under the cloak of marriage, I refused to be tempted?”

There fell a terrible silence, and then a few whispered words.

“She called me a half-caste, Mother!—­me—­a half-caste!”