'Here, where I first saw you,' said she, smiling, and waving a kiss towards me in the prettiest little flirting way imaginable.
'What—are you then—'
'The lady of whom you have such solemn charge.'
'The wife of the Yuze Bashi?'
'The wife of Hussein Ebn al Ajuz,' she added, with a gleam in her black eyes.
'His prisoner, rather, poor Iola! what have you to live for?'
'Those who love me—for them I live, and for them only. I am your prisoner at present, for Hussein has gone to Stamboul with terror in every hair of his beard.
'Ah, Iola, you are worthy of a brighter and a better sphere than your husband can ever assign you. There are some things I wish you could understand; but the Mohammedan can form no conception of the position assigned to your sex among the Franks of the western world, where the influence of Christianity and of chivalry have served to exalt and purify the character of woman.'
'I do know all this,' she answered, impetuously, 'for I am come of Albanian blood, and love the Christians, though they bow their heads and bend their knees before gilded idols and painted pictures; for among our mountains the Mussulmen cling to the memory of their Christian fathers, and, on certain days, say a prayer at the old stone crosses that mark where they lie. Moreover, I have been taught that it was the place assigned to Mary, the first Christian woman, that gave a nobility and purity to the women of Frangistan. I know this, for I am a Greek by birth, though a Mohammedan by faith; and, oh, blessed be the Moolah Moustapha, he who revealed unto me the divine teachings of the Koran. Yet,' she added, with tears, and in a tremulous voice, 'I can remember my dear, dear mother, teaching me to kiss the little cross of the Christian's triple God!'
I winced a little at this peculiar phrase.