you and Mrs. Rushmore will come with
us.'

Margaret laughed.

'You forget that I am a real artist, with a real engagement!' she
answered.

'Yes, I forgot that. I wanted to! I can make Schreiermeyer forget it,
too, if you will come. I'll hypnotise him. Will you authorise me?'

He smiled pleasantly but his long eyes were quite grave. Margaret
supposed that it would be absurd to suspect anything but chaff in his
proposal, and yet she felt an odd conviction that he meant what he
said. Only vain women are easily mistaken about such things. Margaret
turned the point with another little laugh.

'If you put him to sleep he will hibernate, like a dormouse,' she said.
'It will take a whole year to wake him up!'

'I don't think so, but what if it did?'

'I should be a year older, and I am not too young as it is! I'm
twenty-two.'

'It's only in Constantinople that they are so particular about age,'
laughed the Greek. 'After seventeen the price goes down very fast.'

'Really?' Margaret was amused. 'What do you suppose I should be worth
in Turkey?'

Logotheti looked at her gravely and seemed to be estimating her value.

'If you were seventeen, you would be worth a good thousand pounds,' he
said presently, 'and at least three hundred more for your singing.'

'Is that all, for my voice?' She could not help laughing. 'And at
twenty-two, what should I sell for?'

'I doubt whether any one would give much more than eight hundred for
you,' answered Logotheti with perfect gravity. 'That's a big price, you
know. In Persia they give less. I knew a Persian ambassador, for
instance, who got a very handsome wife for four hundred and fifty.'

'Are you in earnest?' asked Margaret. 'Do you mean to say that you
could just go out and buy yourself a wife in the market in
Constantinople?'

'I could not, because I am a Christian. The market exists in a quiet
place where Europeans never find it. You see all the Circassians in
Turkey live by stealing horses and selling their daughters. They are a
noble race, the Circassians! The girls are brought up with the idea,
and they rarely dislike it at all.'

'I never heard of such things!'

'No. The East is very interesting. Will you come? I'll take you
wherever you like. We will leave the archaeologists in Crete and go on
to Constantinople. It will be the most beautiful season on the
Bosphorus, you know, and after that we will go along the southern shore
of the Black Sea to Samsoun, and Ke