"And?" Upon her unfinished question he looked up.
"Yes," he said; "surely! In a few days I shall bring it home."
Her large eyes, the docile eyes of the slave-wife, acclaimed him. For her there were no doubts, no judgments; the husband was the master, the god of the house. Mr. Baruch continued his meal to its end.
"And now," he said presently, when he had finished, "you will go to bed."
She stood up forthwith, revealing again her majestic stature and pose. Mr. Baruch sat at his end of the table with his tiny cup of coffee and his thimble-like glass before him. He lifted his eyes and gazed at her appreciatively, and, for a moment, there lighted in his face a reflection of what Selby and Miss Pilgrim might have seen in it, had they known how to look, when first he realized the silken glories of the carpet. The woman, returning his gaze, maintained her pale, submissive calm.
"Blessings upon you!" he said, dismissing her.
She lowered her splendid head in instant obedience.
"Blessings," she replied, "and again blessings! Have sweet sleep, lord and husband!"
He sat above his coffee and his liqueur and watched her superb body pass forth from the little room. She did not turn to look back; they are not trained to coquetry, those chattel-women of the Caucasus. Mr. Baruch smiled while he let the sweetish and violently strong liqueur roll over his tongue and the assertively fragrant coffee possess his senses. His wife was a "find," a thing perfect of its sort, that satisfied his exigent taste; and now again he was to thrill with the joy of acquisition. There were rugs in the room where he sat one draped over a settee, another hanging upon the wall opposite him, one underfoot each fine and singular in its manner He passed an eye over them and then ceased to sec them. His benevolent face, with all its suggestive reserve and its quiet shrewdness, fell vague with reverie. It was in absence of mind rather than in presence of appetite that he helped himself for the fourth time to the high-explosive liqueur from the old Vilna decanter; and there flashed into sight before him, the clearer for the spur with which the potent drink rowelled his consciousness, the vision of the silk carpet, its glow, as though fire were mixed with the dyes of it, the faultless Tightness and art of its pattern, the soul-ensnaring perfection of the whole.
It was some hours later that he looked into his wife's room on his way to his own. She was asleep, her quiet head cushioned upon the waves of her hair. Mr. Baruch, half-burned cigar between his teeth, stood and gazed at her. Her face, wiped clean of its powder, was white as paper, with that deathlike whiteness which counts as beauty in Circassia; only the shadows of her eyelids and the broad red of her lips stained her pallor. Across her breast the red and blue hem of the quilt lay like a scarf.