"Are you satisfied, effendi?" asked the hakim, quietly, for he seemed used to astonishment on such occasions.
"I am bewildered, at all events, hakim," said I.
"Why so?"
"It was not she I asked for or whom I named."
"How do you know? You did not see. Another looked with your eyes."
"True—but what does the vision portend?"
"You asked to see her——"
"I loved, hakim," said I, emphatically.
"Nay, she who—if Allah and the Muscovite dogs spare you—is to be your wife, your hanoum. Do you not remember? Go! Allah Kerim! it is kismet—your destiny. The destinies of all, and the hour in which we are to die—yea, the very moment—are written by the finger of Azrael on our foreheads at our birth—on yours also, although you believe neither in Azrael[*] nor the Prophet. Go! the mark is there, although we see it not."
[*] The Mahommedan Angel of Death.