“I do,” I replied.
“Give me your card.” But as I had no card I wrote on a slip of paper: “The daughter of a Turkish friend of the Hague Conference will be so pleased to see you.”
He received me at once. There was so much to talk about. He spoke so nicely of my poor dead father, questioned me about the Sultan, about the country I had left, about the Balkans, about Crete, and the Turks themselves. More than an hour we talked together, and when finally I rose to go he said to me: “Is there anything I can do for you?”
“No,” I said, thanking him very kindly.
“Then it was simply to see me,” he went on, “that you came.”
“Yes,” I said, “it is a friendly visit.” He laughed heartily.
“Do you know,” he said, “that is the first time that this has happened in my life.”
Then he was kind enough to send for tea, and the tray was put down on the table among the papers and the journals, and he showed me signed portraits which he had collected during his travels, among them the one that my dear father had given him at The Hague. He then gave me his own, and signed it, “To my only Turkish lady friend.”
*****
I saw him for a little while in Paris on his return from Constantinople, and he came back really enthusiastic. He was much in sympathy with the Young Turks, though he had much also to find fault with. He despised but pitied Abdul Hamid, and hoped that an entente between England and Turkey could be arranged, but his ideas were quite unpractical. His policy was purely sentimental, and his suggestions impossible.