"'Tis you are the boaster there," said Sakr-el-Bahr. "And for the rest, I am what you and he, between you, have made me."
"Did we make you liar and coward?—for that is what you are indeed," she answered.
"Coward?" he echoed, in genuine surprise. "'Twill be some lie that he has told you with the others. In what, pray, was I ever a coward?"
"In what? In this that you do now; in this taunting and torturing of two helpless beings in our power."
"I speak not of what I am," he replied, "for I have told you that I am what you have made me. I speak of what I was. I speak of the past."
She looked at him and she seemed to measure him with her unwavering glance.
"You speak of the past?" she echoed, her voice low. "You speak of the past and to me? You dare?"
"It is that we might speak of it tog
