Suddenly Shelek Pasha saw the dark-blue eyes fastened upon his face with a curious intentness, a strange questioning; and the blue of the turquoise on the hand folded over the other in the grey lap did not quite reassure him. He stopped talking, and spoke in a low voice to his kavass, who presently brought a bottle of champagne--a final proof that Shelek Pasha was not an ascetic or a Turk. As the bottle was being opened the Pasha took up his string of beads and began to finger them, for the blue eyes in the poke bonnet were disconcerting. He was about to speak when Hope said, in a clear voice: "Thee has a strange people beneath thee. Thee rules by the sword, or the word of peace, friend?" The fat, smooth hands fingered the beads swiftly. Shelek Pasha was disturbed, as he proved by replying in French --he had spent years of his youth in France: "Par la force morale, toujours, madame--by moral force, always," he hastened to add in English. Then, casting down his eyes with truly Armenian modesty, he continued in Arabic: "By the word of peace, oh woman of the clear eyes--to whom God give length of days!" Shelek Pasha smiled a greasy smile, and held the bottle of champagne over the glass set for friend David. Never in his life had David the Quaker tasted champagne. In his eyes, in the eyes of Framley, it had been the brew especially prepared by Sheitan to tempt to ruin the feeble ones of the earth. But the doublet of David's mind was all unbraced now; his hat was off, his Quaker drab was spotted with the grease of a roasted lamb. He had tasted freedom; he was near to license now. He took his hand from the top of the glass, and the amber liquid and the froth poured in. At that instant he saw Hope's eyes upon his, he saw her hand go to the poke bonnet, as it were to unloosen the strings. He saw for the first time the turquoise ring; he saw the eyes of Shelek Pasha on Hope with a look prophesying several kinds of triumph, none palatable to him; and he stopped short on that road easy of gradient, which Shelek Pasha was macadamising for him. He put his hand up as though to pull his hat down over his eyes, as was his fashion when troubled or when he was setting his mind to a task. The hat was not there; but Hope's eyes were on his, and there were a hundred Quaker hats or Cardinals' hats in them. He reached out quickly and caught Hope's hand as it undid the strings of her grey bonnet. "Will thee be mad, Hope?" "All the world's mad but thee and me, David, and thee's a bit mad," she answered in the tongue of Framley. "The gaud upon thy hand?" he asked sternly; and his eyes flashed from her to Shelek Pasha, for a horrible suspicion crept into his brain--a shameless suspicion; but even a Quaker may be human and foolish, as history has shown. "The wine at thine elbow, David, and thine hat!" she answered steadily.