laughter checked him:

"I know you, Ferez. That is why I ask. That is why I shall have no
reply from you. Only my wits can ever answer me any questions."

She stood laughing at him, swathed in her white wool, looming like
some mocking spectre in the misty moonlight of the after-deck.

"Oh, Ferez," she said in her sweet, malicious voice, "there was a
curse on Midas, too! You play at high finance; you sell what you never
had to sell, and you are paid for it. All your life you have been busy
selling, re-selling, bargaining, betraying, seeking always gain where
only loss is possible--loss of all that justifies a man in daring to
stand alive before the God that made him!... And yet--that which you
call love--that shadowy emotion which you have also sold to-night--I
think you really feel for me.... Yes, I believe it.... But it, too,
has its price.... _What_ was that price, Ferez?"

"Believe me, Nihla----"

"Oh, Ferez, you ask too much! No! Let _me_ tell _you_, then. The price
was paid by that American, who is not one but a German."

"That is absurd!"

"Why the Red Eagle, then? And the friendship of Excellenz? What is
he then, this Gerhardt, but a millionaire? Why is nobility so
gracious then? What does Gerhardt give for his Red Eagle?--for the
politeness of Excellenz?--for the crooked smile of a Bavarian
Baroness and the lifted lorgnette of Austria? What does he give for
_me_? Who buys me after all? Enver? Talaat? Hilmi? Who sells me?
Excellenz? Von-der-Goltz? You? And who pays for me? Gerhardt, who
takes his profit in Red Eagles and offers me to d'Eblis for
something in exchange to please Excellenz--and you? And what, at the
end of the bargaining, does d'Eblis pay for me--pay through Gerhardt
to you, and through you to Excellenz, and through Excellenz to the
Kaiser Wilhelm II----"

Ferez, showing his teeth, came close to her and spoke very softly:

"See how white is the moonlight off Seraglio Point, my Nihla!... It is
no whiter than those loveliest ones who lie fathoms deep below these
little silver waves.... Each with her bowstring snug about her snowy
neck.... As fair and young, as warm and fresh and sweet as thou, my
Nihla."

He smiled at her; and if the smile stiffened an instant on her lips,
the next instant her light, dauntless laughter mocked him.

"For a price," she said, "you would sell even Life to that old miser,
Death! Then listen what you have done, little smiling, whining jackal
of his Excellency!