HOUSE AT SERJILLA
This was too much for Ḥājj Maḥmūd's sense of the proprieties.
"You took her from her husband?" said he. "Wāllah! that was the deed of a Noṣairi or an Ismaili. Does a Moslem take away a man's wife? It is forbidden."
"He was my enemy," explained Yūnis. "By God and the Prophet of God, there was enmity between us even unto death."
"Had she children?" inquired Maḥmūd.
"Ey wāllah!" assented the Sheikh, a little put about by Maḥmūd's disapproval. "But I paid two thousand piastres to the husband and three thousand——"
"By the Face of God!" exclaimed Maḥmūd, still more outraged, "it was the deed of an infidel."
And here I put an end to further discussion of the merits of the case by asking whether the woman had liked being carried off.