Fu-Manchu.
"I suppose you will declare that you do not know me!" I said harshly.
Her lips trembled, but she made no reply.
"It is very convenient to forget, sometimes," I ran on bitterly, then
checked myself, for I knew that my words were prompted by a feckless
desire to hear her defence, by a fool's hope that it might be an
acceptable one. I looked again at the net contrivance in my hand; it
had a strong spring fitted to it and a line attached. Quite obviously
it was intended for snaring. "What were you about to do?" I demanded
sharply; but in my heart, poor fool that I was, I found admiration for
the exquisite arch of Karamaneh's lips, and reproach because they were
so tremulous.
She spoke then.
"Dr. Petrie--"
"Well?"
"You seem to be--angry with me, not so much because--of what I do, as
because I do not remember you. Yet--"
"Kindly do not revert to the matter," I interrupted. "You have chosen,
very conveniently, to forget that once we were friends. Please
yourself; but answer my question."
She clasped her hands with a sort of wild abandon.
"Why do you treat me so?" she cried. She had the most fascinating
accent imaginable. "Throw me into prison, kill me if you like for what
I have done!" She stamped her foot. "For what I have done! But do not
torture me, try to drive me mad with your reproaches--that I forget
you! I tell you--again I tell you--that until you came one night, last
week, to rescue some one from"--(there was the old trick of hesitating
before the name of Fu-Manchu)--"from _him_, I had never, never seen
you!"
The dark eyes looked into mine, afire with a positive hunger for
belief--or so I was sorely tempted to suppose.
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