“The quality—­of indulgence?” he questioned, with a half-railing air.

“The quality—­of gentleness.”

“But is there not another quality which you American girls would admire more than that gentleness—­if you ever had the chance in your lives to see it?  The quality of dominance?  The courage of the man who dares what he desires, and who takes what he wills?  Is not that——­”

“Ah, yes, we love strong men,” Arlee flung into the speech that was bearing him on like a tide, “but we don’t think them strong unless they are strong enough to fight themselves.  They may take what they will—­but they mustn’t crush it....  There is a gentleness in great strength—­I can’t explain what I mean——­”

“Ah, I see, I see.”  He smiled subtly.  “I am not to crush you, little Rose of Desire,” he said softly.

She met the sly significance of his gaze with a look of frank, unfaltering candor.  “Of course not,” she said stoutly.  “When you—­you make me afraid of you, you make me like you less.  You seem less like the friend I knew on the boat.”

“Ah, that boat!...  You were my friend, then!” he added suddenly, with a note of question sounding through the affirmation, and she answered quickly, looking away with an air of petulant reproach.  “Why, you know I was, Captain Kerissen.  And here in Cairo——­”

“Yes, here in Cairo,” he interrupted triumphantly, “in the face of those eyes and tongues—­I saw that red-headed dog of an Englishman looking his anger at you!  But you smiled on me before them all—­those fools, those tyrannic fools——­”

“But you mustn’t abuse my other friends!  They were only—­stupid!”

“Stupid as their blood brother, the ox!...  But they are not in the picture now—­those other friends!” Disagreeably he laughed.  “And you do not grieve for them—­no?  The world has not touched you?  There is no one out there,”—­he made a gesture over the guarding walls—­“no one who holds a fragment of your thought, of your heart in his hands?”

She looked at him as if puzzled, then burst into a bubbling laugh.  “Why, of course not!  I’ve just had a nice time with people.  There has never been a bit of sentiment about it!”

“Not on your side,” he said meaningly, and because this was hitting the truth smartly on the head she looked past him in some confusion.

“Oh—­boys!” she said with a deprecating little laugh.  “I’ve never listened to them.”

He leaned back in his chair, feeling for his cigarette case, and the contentment of his look deepened.  “You have been a child, asleep to life,” he murmured complacently.  “I told you you were a princess—­let us say a sleeping princess waiting for the prince, like that old fairy tale of the English.”  He was looking at his cigarette as he tapped it on the arm of his chair, and slowly struck a light, then, after the first breath, “But do you not hear his footsteps in your sleep?” he added, and gave her a glance from the corner of his eyes.