“And like all creeds, in practice it loses both its best and its worst characteristics. I never go out in London without seeing hundreds of women more vile, more wretched, more miserable, than my more merciful religion would ever allow those weaker creatures to become; while in our harems, which shock you so much, there is many a woman for whose power on earth some of your proud European beauties would willingly exchange their hopes of heaven.”
“Perhaps,” said Lauriston shortly; and, after a pause, he said, “You say Nouna’s destiny is bound up with that of an Englishman; if that is so, and he is one of the right sort, depend upon it he will do more for her than all her teachers and preachers ever did.”
“You think so?”
“I am sure of it. I believe the influence of an honest man’s love to be stronger than that of all the mesmerists that ever hid pins or learned secrets.”
“You believe it, even after the proof I gave you! Will you hold to your belief in the face of this? I now, at this moment, by the force I hold over her, command her to leave her room up stairs and come down here to us.”
There was a long silence: the Asiatic held the stem of his hookah in his hand and sat like a statue, his lips tightly compressed, his eyes brilliant and fixed. Lauriston also left off smoking, listening and watching the door with intense excitement which made him sick and cold. For some minutes there was not a sound to be heard but the faint night-cries and noises that came through the open window. At last a board creaked in the hall outside, a knock was heard on the door of the front-room, then the turning of the handle, and a voice called weakly:
“Rahas, are you there?”
Lauriston started up; the merchant never moved. The door of the room they were in was drawn softly ajar, and Nouna’s voice almost in a whisper asked:
“Has Mr. Lauriston been here? Tell me, hasn’t he been here?”
The young Englishman crossed the room with two strides, and pushed the door gently open with a shaking hand. The little weak voice thrilled him to the heart. She peeped in round the door, all in clinging white, with a laugh in her eyes at sight of him, but with a rather subdued and dreamy manner.