“And now look!” she cried, in a tone of loathing. She opened a closet and drew forth a chest, richly inlaid. From its heart she took several garments: they were Anatolian—even more Oriental than if they had been Turkish. She threw them on the floor, and stamped upon them. “His grandmother is insulting me with these. She thinks that is the way I dress—I, a European to my finger-tips.”
I picked up the despised garments and examined them with curiosity mingled with admiration. The straight, stiff tunics of home-spun silks, the jackets reaching below the knees, spun by hand and fantastically embroidered in a riot of colour were full of oriental poetry.
“But they are truly lovely,” I cried. “They’re better than your French clothes. Any woman would look adorable in them. I wish you would wear them.”
Nashan only snatched them from my hands and stamped on them again.
As the date of her marriage drew near, I heard that there were scenes of rebellion and tears of helplessness, but her father held fast to his purpose, and the marriage took place. I did not go to it. I was engrossed with my own troubles at the time, and besides I did not wish to be present at what I considered the immolation of a woman.
Two days after the wedding, a note reached me from her saying: “Will you come and spend the day with me?”
I went to her new home in Stamboul—fortunately free from his relatives since these all lived in Anatolia. She was seated in a vast, bare, oriental room which contrasted strangely with her French gown and Parisian coiffure. There were no traces of tears on her face such as I had expected to find; her pupils only seemed larger, and her eyes were shining with a combativeness which I had felt was in her, but which I had not encountered before.
Silently we embraced each other.
“Is he dreadful?” I whispered.
“I don’t even know how he looks,” she replied. “I have not favoured him with a glance. He has not been able to make me speak to him, and you know that according to our laws, so long as I remain silent, he has no rights over me.”