Well, man is very human, and great men are often even more human than other men. For when Mouraki saw that we were alone, when he had finished his cigarette, flung it away and taken another, he observed to me, obviously summarising the result of those meditations to which my fancy had imparted such loftiness:
‘Yes, I don’t know that I ever saw a handsomer girl.’
There was nothing to say but one thing, and I said it.
‘No more did I, your Excellency,’ said I.
But I was not pleased with the expression of Mouraki’s eye; the contentment induced in me by the safety of my friends, by my own escape, and by the end of Constantine’s ill-used power, was suddenly clouded as I sat and looked at the baffling face and subtle smile of the Governor. What was it to him whether Phroso were a handsome girl or not?
And I suppose I might just as well have added—What was it to me?
[CHAPTER XIII]
THE SMILES OF MOURAKI PASHA
At the dinner-table Mouraki proved a charming companion. His official reserve and pride vanished; he called me by my name simply, and extorted a like mode of address from my modesty. He professed rapture at meeting a civilised and pleasant companion in such an out-of-the-way place; he postponed the troubles and problems of Neopalia in favour of a profusion of amusing reminiscences and pointed anecdotes. He gave me a delightful evening, and bade me the most cordial of good-nights. I did not know whether his purpose had been to captivate or merely to analyse me; he had gone near to the former, and I did not doubt that he had succeeded entirely in the latter. Well, there was nothing I wanted to conceal—unless it might be something which I was still striving to conceal even from myself.