“Unable to longer endure it, I wrote her a note. Perhaps I did wrong: the God to whom you taught me to pray shall judge. Instead of my child, the stern father comes to judge, to condemn.
“Well, what can I say? My only fault was that, homesick and weak, I left you in this cold city and fled with my brother. When I repented and would have returned—on my knees begging your forgiveness—you scorned me, never even reading my plea. We women of Georgia are proud; it is our nature. I could not seek you again. Now you know all. Once you loved me—is that feeling utterly dead in your heart? If I could bring you overwhelming proof that I have ever been true as the needle to the pole, that my only fault was in giving way to this terrible home sickness, would you, oh, Samson Cereal, hate me, scorn me still?”
He lets his head fall on his breast and groans; surely such a scene as this was not in the contract when he planned to meet and defeat Aroun Scutari. He has expected that this woman is in sympathy with the Turk, that she will gloat over his capture, and laugh in derision while he fumes. Instead, she appeals to his heart, batters down the walls of his prejudice, and awakens feelings that have lain dormant, frozen, almost a score of years.
“I do not ask,” she goes on, choking back her sobs, “to be your wife again—that I know is impossible; but, in the name of mercy, allow me only once to hear her lips call me 'mother,’ and then welcome death. This is my prayer. See, I am at your feet—I beseech, entreat you not to say me nay. By all the love you once bore me, by the affection you felt toward your own angel mother, grant me this!”
He may be made of ice, this man. Her wild entreaty thaws him out.
“It shall be as you say, woman.”
“God be praised!”
“When your brother comes, I will investigate this claim you make. If you can prove its truth—well, I can say nothing more, only that, never having been divorced, you are still my wife in the eye of the law.”
“It is very, very sad!” interrupts a voice, and turning, they behold the spider who has spun his web across Cairo Street—the sneering Turk who has never forgotten what happened twenty years ago.
The woman shudders and trembles, but not so Samson Cereal, who stands there like the rock that has breasted many a storm in the panic days on 'Change.