lf-opened eyes, but not a muscle of his face moved. What he thought,
it was impossible to tell, but that he drew his own conclusions was
evident.

"I have been told that she is very gifted, very beautiful, very pious,"
he said.

"You speak our language well," said Briarfield; "but for a slight
foreign intonation, I should take you for an Englishman."

"Allah forbid!" he cried, lifting his hands beseechingly.

"You would not like to be an Englishman?"

"If I must be of one country, yes. But I am of no country. If you have a
country, you have responsibilities, duties, prejudices."

"And you are without these?"

"Would you have me assume them?"

"Without them no man lives his full life."

"With them he becomes narrow, insular, and what your poet calls
'cribbed, cabined, and confined.'"

"They are the necessary limitations of our humanity."

"Does not that depend on the purpose for which a man lives, signore?
Besides, there are things which happen to some men which say to them,
'Messieurs, you are without country, without father, mother, friends,
and responsibilities, and therefore without prejudices; live your lives
in your own way.'"

"That is impossible, Signor Ricordo."

"And why?"

"A man is always responsible to the humanity of which he forms a part,
he is responsible to the God who made him."

"Always to the latter, not always to the former."

"You believe in God, then?"

The stranger was silent a moment. An expression shot across his face
which suggested pain.

"A man might be what you call an atheist in London, Signor Briarfield,"
he said, "with the grey, leaden sky, its long lines of streets, and its
myriads of men and women crawling over each other like ants on an
ant-hill; but in the East, amidst the great silences--no, a man must
believe in God there. The sun by day, and the moon and stars by night,
with the great silence brooding over him--great God, yes!"

Briarfield was struck dumb by the quiet intensity of his words.

"This is a man who has suffered," he thought; but he said aloud, after
an awkward silence, "You are a Mohammedan, I suppose, signore?"

"I," replied the other, "I am nothing, signore, and I am
everything--Christian, Mohammedan, Brahmin, what you will. I believe in
them all, because all postulate a devil."

"You believe in a devil, then?"

"Have I not lived in London? Ay, and in Morocco also. But above all, I
have lived!"

Had some men said this, there would be s