"Oh! And so you—"
"I am French-Turk," she whispered back. "That is very often so—in the harems of Cairo.... She was so lovely," said the girl wistfully. "My father must have loved her very much ... he never brought another wife here. Always I lived alone with my old nurse and the governesses—"
"You had—lessons?"
"Oh, nothing but lessons—all of that world which was shut away so soon.... French and English and music and the philosophy—Oh, we Turks are what you call blue stockings, monsieur, shut away with our books and our dreams ... and our memories ... We are so young and already the real world is a memory.... Sometimes," she said, with a tremor of suppressed passion in her still little tones, "I could wish that I had died when I was very young and so happy when my father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went down into the hold to play with their dogs..."
She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to Moslems—but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our grandmothers are..."
"With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your grandmothers were!"
"My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame it on her—the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget—"
"Forget?" said Ryder under his breath.
"Forget—and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very dangerous here—"
"It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more dangerous every moment—"