“Hainán,” shouted Romashov.
The servant started, jumped up, and stood at attention. Fear and embarrassment were displayed on his countenance.
“Allah?” asked Romashov in the most friendly way.
The Circassian’s shaven boyish mouth expanded in a broad grin which showed his beautiful white teeth in the candle-light.
“Allah, your Honour.”
“It is all the same, Hainán. Allah is in you. Allah is in me. There is one Allah for us all.”
“My excellent Hainán,” thought Romashov to himself as he went into his room. “And I dare not shake hands with him. Dare not! Damn it all! from to-day I will dress and undress myself. It’s a disgrace that some one else should do it for me.”
That evening he did not go to the mess-room, but stayed at home and brought out of a drawer a thick, ruled book, nearly entirely filled with elegant, irregular handwriting. He wrote far into the night. It was the third in order of Romashov’s novels, and its title ran: A Fatal Beginning.
But our lieutenant blushed furiously at his literary efforts, and he would not have been induced for anything in the world to acknowledge his authorship.