He knew I wouldn't have looked at
him again, if he had--even if he hadn't told me about the wife herself.
She had had this boy, and gone out of her mind afterwards, so she wasn't
living with Cassim--that was the excuse he made when I taxed him with
deceiving me. Her father and mother had taken her back. I don't know
surely whether she's living or dead, but I believe she's dead, and her
body buried beside the grave supposed to be Cassim's. Anyhow, the boy's
living, and he's the one thing on earth Cassim loves better than
himself."
"When did you find out about--about all this?" Victoria asked, almost
whispering.
"Eight months after we were married I heard about his wife. I think
Cassim was true to me, in his way, till that time. But we had an awful
scene. I told him I'd never live with him again as his wife, and I never
have. After that day, everything was different. No more happiness--not
even an Arab woman's idea of happiness. Cassim began to hate me, but
with the kind of hate that holds and won't let go. He wouldn't listen
when I begged him to set me free. Instead, he wouldn't let me go out at
all, or see anyone, or receive or send letters. He punished me by
flirting outrageously with a pretty woman, the wife of a French officer.
He took pains that I should hear everything, through my servants. But
his cruelty was visited on his own head, for soon there came a dreadful
scandal. The woman died suddenly of chloral poisoning, after a quarrel
with her husband on Cassim's account, and it was thought she'd taken too
much of the drug on purpose.
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