'It is not apparent. Perhaps in Ramazan, if God wills. Or perhaps next Ramazan. We shall see.' 'Allah Allah! How many times have I told you to bring your people here, Shaban? We have plenty of room to build you a house somewhere, and you could see your wife and children every day instead of once in two or three years.' 'Wives, wives--a man will not die if he does not see them every day! Besides, it would not be good for the children. In Constantinople they become rascals. There are too many Christians.' And he added hastily, 'It is better for a boy to grow up in the mountains.' 'But we have a mountain here, behind the house,' laughed the Pasha. 'Your mountain is not like our mountains,' objected Shaban gravely, hunting in his mind for the difference he felt but could not express. 'And that new wife of yours,' went on the Pasha. 'Is it good to leave a young woman like that? Are you not afraid?' 'No, my Pasha. I am not afraid. We all live together, you know. My brothers watch, and the other women. She is safer than yours. Besides, in my country it is not as it is here.' 'I don't know why I have never been to see this wonderful country of yours, Shaban. I have so long intended to, and I never have been. But I must climb my mountain or they will think that I have become a rascal too.' And, rising from his chair, he gave the Albanian a friendly pat. 'Shall I come too, my Pasha? Zuembuel Agha sent word--' 'Zuembuel Agha!' interrupted the Pasha irritably. 'No, you needn't come. I will explain to Zuembuel Agha.' With which he left Shaban to pick up the empty coffee cup. II From the upper terrace a bridge led across the public road to the wood. If it was not a wood it was at all events a good-sized grove, climbing the steep hillside very much as it chose. Every sort and size of tree was there, but the greater number of them were of a kind to be sparsely trimmed in April with a delicate green, and among them were so many twisted Judas trees as to tinge whole patches of the slope with their deep rose bloom. The road which the Pasha slowly climbed, swinging his amber beads behind him as he walked, zigzagged so leisurely back and forth among the trees that a carriage could have driven up it. In that way, indeed, the Pasha had more than once mounted to the kiosque, in the days when his mother used to spend a good part of her summer up there, and when he was married to his first wife. The memory of the two, and of their old-fashioned ways, entered not too bitterly into his general feeling of well-being, ministered to by the budding trees and the spring air and the sunset view. Every now and then an enormous plane tree invited him to stop and look at it, or a semi-circle of cypresses.