Pray do not refuse."
"Your excellency is very kind," she replied, painfully conscious
of acute nervousness. "It is more than good of you."
"It is good of you to grant me so much pleasure," he returned,
sinking gracefully upon a settee, as Phil Abingdon resumed her
seat. "Condolences are meaningless. Why should I offer them to
one of your acute perceptions? But you know--" the long, magnetic
eyes regarded her fixedly--"you know what is in my heart."
Phil Abingdon bit her lip, merely nodding in reply.
"Let us then try to forget, if only for a while," said Ormuz
Khan. "I could show you so easily, if you would consent to allow
me, that those we love never leave us."
The spell of his haunting voice was beginning to have its effect.
Phil Abingdon found herself fighting against something which at
once repelled and attracted her. She had experienced this unusual
attraction before, and this was not the first time that she had
combated it. But whereas formerly she had more or less resigned
herself to the strange magic which lay in the voice and in the
eyes of Ormuz Khan, this morning there was something within her
which rebelled fiercely against the Oriental seductiveness of his
manner.
She recognized that a hot flush had covered her cheeks. For the
image of Paul Harley, bronzed, gray-eyed, and reproachful, had
appeared before her mind's eye, and she knew why her resentment
of the Persian's charm of manner had suddenly grown so intense.
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