Now he finished his letter to his mother, addressed and stamped it, took sword and revolver from the tent-rack, and went for another walk upon the road to Aladyn. Not with the idea of meeting her. You are not to imagine it. He was merely looking for a native wagon-driver who would take his letter to the post. Presently one came along, straddling with unclean bare feet upon the foot-board of his creaking wagon, scratching the populous head under his sheepskin cap with one hand, the other being engaged in goading his ill-fed bullocks with the end of a sharpened stick. And to him Morty said in his brand-new Turkish, not being up to the Bulgarian:
“Ohay arabaji! How much casho will you aski to carry a mektub to the Posta Khanê in Varna? Understandi? Yok?”
But the native shook his shaggy head, scowling upon his interlocutor in a manner the reverse of friendly, and upon Morty’s drawing anew upon his stores of Turkish, responded with a Rabelaisian gesture of contempt which brought the wrathful blood to the rim of the Ensign’s forage-cap.
“You uncivil beast. Ain’t we here to fight for you?” he demanded; but the arabaji only prodded his lean bullocks and creaked upon his way. Morty would have dearly liked to follow him, and punch his shaggy head, but that a long way off he saw her coming, and his heart thudded against his scarlet coat, and his stock was suffocating.... Because she must not pass him by, believing that he had been a boor, coarse and unfeeling. She must stay—she must hear what had to be said. And he had no words, but intensity of feeling lent gesture eloquence. He stretched his hands, palm upwards, towards her, then brought them to his lips, and folded them upon his breast.
“You who are so stricken, yet so beautiful—you to whom my heart has gone out—whom I loved at sight—pardon me!—pity me! Oh! do not pass me by without one word!”
The gesture said all this, though he did not know it. She checked her fiery Kabarda in mid-canter, and rode slowly up to him. He grew dizzy as the breeze brought him the remembered perfume of her hair. And she said, slowly, fixing her great dark eyes upon the simple face of Mortimer Jowell:
“You wish to speak to me?” She added, as he looked away, stroking the delicate withers of the thoroughbred: “You wish to tell me that you did not know, I think, and that now you do know, you are sorry—yes?”
He gulped the lump in his throat and nodded, finding courage to look at her. She said—and an Asiatic lisping of the consonants and lengthening of the vowels lent charm and strangeness to the words—
“You are an agha in the Army of the Ingiliz?”
He answered at a venture that he was. She said, and the small pale face had a delicate vivacity: