o me. War, and the memory of many friends
slain and of wealth lightly plundered had unchained men's passion; and
where passion's pinions wave, whether in the struggle for mine and thine
or for other possessions, ever since the days of Cain and Abel, it is
always and everywhere the same."

Paula, who till now had stood motionless in front of the old man, shook
her head and said bitterly:

"But all this will not give me back my father and brother. You yourself
look like a kind-hearted man; but for the future--if you are as just as
you are kind--find out to whom you are speaking before you talk of the
compassion of the Moslems!"

She once more bowed good-night and left the room. Orion followed her;
come what might he must see her. But he returned a few minutes after,
breathing hard and with his teeth set. He had taken her hand, had tried
to tell her all a loving heart could find to say; but how sharply, how
icily had he been repulsed, with what an air of intolerable scorn had she
turned her back upon him! And now that he was in their midst again he
scarcely heard his father express his regrets that so painful a scene
should have occurred under his roof, while the Arab said that he could
quite understand why the daughter of Thomas should have been betrayed to
anger: the massacre of Abyla was quite inexcusable.

"But then," the old man went on, "in what war do not such things take
place? Even the Christian is not always master of himself: you yourself I
know, lost two promising sons--and who were the murderers?
Christians--your own fellow-believers. . ."

"The bitterest foes of my beliefs," said the governor slowly, and every
syllable was a calm and dignified reproof to the Moslem for supposing
that the creed of those who had killed his sons could be his. As he spoke
he opened his eyes wide with the look of those hard, opaquely-glittering
stones which his ancestors had been wont to set for eyes in their
portrait statues. But he suddenly closed them again and said
indifferently:

"At what price do you value your hanging? I have a fancy to buy it. Name
your lowest terms: I cannot bear to bargain."

"I had thought of asking five hundred thousand drachmae," said the
dealer. "Four hundred thousand drachmae, and it is yours."

The governor's wife clasped her hands at such a sum and made warning
signals to her husband, shaking her head disapprovingly, when Orion,
making a great effort to show that he too took an interest i