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 Bet you came on this party to save food. I’ll give you twenty dollars, seventeen in cash.” He continued to gaze at her as though he had not heard. —and the king spoke to a slave crouching at his feet—Halim—Lord?—I possess all things, do I not?—Thou art the Son of Morning, Lord—Then listen, Halim: I have a desire— “Twenty-five,” she said, shaking his arm.

“No.”

“No, no, no, no!” she hammered both brown fists on the rail. “You make me so damn mad! Can’t you say anything except No? You—you—” she glared at him with her angry tanned face and her grave opaque eyes, and used that phrase Jenny had traded her.

He took her by the elbows, and she became taut, still watching his face: he could feel the small hard muscles in her arms. “What are you going to do?” she asked. He raised her from the floor, and she began to struggle. But he carried her implacably across the deck and sat on a deckchair and turned her face downward across his knees. She clawed and kicked in a silent fury, but he held her, and she ceased to struggle, and set her teeth into his leg through the gritty cloth of his trousers, and clung like a raging puppy while he drew her skirt tight across her thighs and spanked her, good.

“I meant it!” she cried, raging and tearless, when he had dragged her teeth loose and set her upright on his lap. There was a small wet oval on his trouserleg. “I meant it!” she repeated, taut and raging.

“I know you meant it. That’s why I spanked you. Not because you said it: what you said doesn’t mean anything because you’ve got the genders backward. I spanked you because you meant it, whether you knew what to say or not.”

Suddenly she became lax, and wept, and he held her against his breast. But she ceased crying as abruptly, and lay quiet