(For ever? Alas! where were a heedless passion and two bright eyes hurrying me?)
'It is indeed delightful to have one's life thus entwined with another (and you will be always in Rodosdchig, I hope?); to have a double existence and double joy, as if we lived in the Rose Garden of Sadi.'
'Ah—but I fear your existence is so entwined already: your husband, Iola?'
She uttered a faint cry of anger, and thus I found my conjectures right.
'My husband!' she exclaimed; 'talk not of him! He bought me as he did his horse, in the common market-place. He never asked me to love him. O that were a condescension too much for a proud Turk! I am a Mohammedan now; but I was a Christian born, and am by blood a Greek, and my dead ancestors, who lie at Smyrna and at Scio, would raise their fleshless hands against me, could they know me as I know myself to-day. My husband bought me from a ruffian, reckless as himself. I was bathed, perfumed, and led to his arms. Bismillah! speak no more of my husband!'
These words removed every vestige of scruple in my heart. A purchased slave! could I ever view her as a wedded wife? But now she drew her feradjee close about her, and fled from my side without a word of to-morrow, or of meeting again; for we had unconsciously approached too near one of the town-gates, where, as she had previously mentioned, a dumb slave awaited her. Here I lost sight of her, having pledged my word of honour neither to follow nor to make inquiries after her.
My heart sank as she left me; and the idea of this delicate and beautiful woman being bought and sold in a market-place, and being now the wedded slave of a sensual Moslem, made me writhe and ponder deeply, as I walked along the dark and muddy streets of Rodosdchig. The town was now sunk in silence, and not a sound was heard, save the occasional howling of wild and wandering dogs—the faithful but 'unclean beasts,' of the ungrateful Koran.
'Love begetteth love,' so my heart was sorely troubled. I could no longer doubt that this beautiful Oriental loved me. Her dark but brilliant eyes were full of it.
Her sighs but half suppressed as she had hung upon my shoulder; her cheek alternately pale and flushed, were also full of it.
Her tremulous voice—her conversation and manner—her very silence spoke of it—this deep fount of passion opened up within her ardent heart for the first time, and yet—pardon me for the chilling close to my sentence—she had been some years married.