“No, mademoiselle. They have been here several times this morning, but are out now. They seem to be in some kind of trouble.”
“As soon as they come in, tell them I should like to see them.”
It was a haggard and miserable brother who came to my room an hour or so later.
After telling him all my adventure, I repeated Arif Pasha’s message.
My brother gave me a long, thoughtful look.
“Do you know,” he said at last, “that Arif and I have been deadly enemies for the last three years?”
CHAPTER XX
IN THE WAKE OF COLUMBUS
THIS night of terrors proved my last adventure in Turkey. Soon afterwards events began to force me to feel that in order to live my own life, as seemed right to me, I must flee from all I knew and loved to an unknown, alien land. It is a hard fate: it involves sacrifices and brings heartaches. After all, what gives to life sweetness and charm is the orderliness with which one develops. To grow on the home soil, and quietly to reach full bloom there, gives poise to one’s life. It may be argued that this orderly growth rarely produces great and dazzling results; still it is more worth while. People with restless dispositions, people to whom constant transplanting seems necessary, even if they attain great development, are rather to be pitied than to be envied; and, when the transplanting produces only mediocre results, there is nothing to mitigate the pity.
By nature I was a social revolutionist, and I liked neither the attitude of the men towards the women nor of the women towards life, among the people of my race. I have learned better since, and know now that social laws exist because society has found them to be wise, and that little madcaps like me are better off if they respect them. But at that time I had more daring than wisdom, and longed to go where people lived their lives both with more freedom and with more intensity. Moreover, I wanted to “do something”—like so many feather-brained girls all the world over—just what, I did not know, for I had no especial talents.