“In different ways. Sometimes to extort an enemy’s secret, sometimes to test a woman’s faith—but this last not often; for experience and Mahomet teach us that women have no souls, and that by concerning ourselves more with what they do than with what they feel, we shall spare ourselves many disappointments.”
“You are a Mahometan then?”
“With the modifications which result from long contact with men of other faiths. Thus I drink wine, in moderation; I look upon images and statues without horror; and I believe that by springing from a race whose men have for generations believed that women may have spiritual life, the best of your European maids do indeed attain in time to something which may pass for a soul.”
“And Nouna?”
The merchant smiled. “Ask Mrs. Ellis, her guardian, who has known her for some years, what impression the bible-readings, the church-goings, the preachings, the prayings, the exhortations of her Christian teachers have had on her, the letters of her mother, whom she adores, and who never writes to her daughter without an exhortation to religion! All the bishops in the world would not make Nouna more of a Christian than her Persian kittens.”
“You can say as much of many English girls,” said Lauriston hastily and uneasily.
“Of most,” assented the Oriental readily. “And of nine-tenths of the most orthodox of your alms-giving and priest-loving women. What spirit lives in their charity? in their worship? When man no longer cares for their devotion, they yield it to God, the priest, and the respectful poor.”
“And you can see no evidence of a soul in that very capacity for devotion?”
“No more than I see in the much more absorbing devotion of my dog.”
“That seems to me a creed as degrading to the man who holds it as to the woman whose self-respect it kills.”