He turned a troubled, inquiring countenance toward me, and then back to his wife.
“Why is she mocking me? Have I done anything ridiculous?”
He appeared more than ever like a frightened little boy. He leaned toward her as if he wished to hide behind her skirt, every movement seeming to beg for protection.
The stony expression left Nashan’s face. She no longer ignored his existence. What was fine, womanly, maternal in her character became alive.
She put her arm round his shoulder.
“Why are you laughing?” she demanded quietly of me in French. “If he were a Christian dog he would have known many women, and he would be aware of the sizes of their feet. But he is only a clean Osmanli boy, and, as you see, I am the first woman he has ever seen, besides his mother.”
It was a new Nashan: not the europeanized Nashan, with her foreign veneer, but a real woman, the one who had once said to me: “I am sure of the existence of Allah, because he manifests himself so quickly in me.” Unmistakably at that moment God was manifesting Himself in her.
I rose to go. She rose, too, and so did the man, who had picked up his slippers and held them fast to his heart. He had not understood a word of the French that had passed between us.
“I bought you these because I thought maybe you would like them,” he repeated.
“I like them very much indeed,” she said, taking them from him.