"And I, fair lady, am grateful to Heaven that it placed me in thy way to the door unintentionally."
He stepped aside, and she passed on and out.
The interior of the church, but a minute before so overwhelmingly magnificent and impressive, became commonplace and dull. The singing rolled on unheard. His eyes fixed on the door through which she went; his sensations were as if awakening from a dream in which he had seen a heavenly visitant, and been permitted to speak to it.
The spell ceased with the music; then, with swift returning sense, he remembered Mahommed's saying: "Thou wilt know her at sight."
And he knew her—the Her of the screed brought only that day by Ali.
Nor less distinctly did he recall every incident of the parting with Mahommed, every word, every injunction—the return of the ruby ring, even then doubtless upon the imperious master's third finger, a subject of hourly study—the further speech, "They say whoever looketh at her is thenceforward her lover"—and the final charge, with its particulars, concluding: "Forget not that in Constantinople, when I come, I am to receive her from thy hand peerless in all things as I left her."
His shoes of steel were strangely heavy when he regained his horse at the edge of the court. For the first time in years, he climbed into the saddle using the stirrup like a man reft of youth. He would love the woman—he could not help it. Did not every man love her at sight?
The idea colored everything as he rode slowly back to his quarters.
Dismounting at the door, it plied him with the repetition, Every man loves her at sight.
He thought of training himself to hate her, but none the less through the hours of the night he heard the refrain, Every man loves her at sight.