"Come," I said, wishing to begin by soothing her fears; "if, as so often happens in your own country, I were obliged, if only in order to assure our own happiness, to make another marriage, would not you understand that this was only a sacrifice which I owed to my uncle if he required it of me--a family arrangement, in fact, which could not separate us from each other? What have you to fear so long as I only love you? Did you trouble yourself about Hadidje or Zouhra?" "Oh, but they were not Christians! Anna Campbell would be your real wife; and your religion and laws would enjoin you to love her." "No," I exclaimed, "neither my religion nor my laws could change my heart or undo my love for you. It is my duty to protect your life and make it a happy one; for are not you also my wife? Why should you alarm yourself about an obligation of mine which, if we lived in your country, would not disturb your confidence in me? Anna Campbell is not really in love with me: we are only like two friends, prepared to unite with each other in a conventional union, such as you may see many a couple around us enter upon--an association of fortunes, in which the only personal sentiments demanded are reciprocal esteem. My dear girl, what is there to be jealous of? Don't you know that you will always be everything to me?" Poor Kondje-Gul listened to these somewhat strange projects without the least idea of opposing them. Still under the yoke of her native ideas, those Oriental prejudices in which she had been brought up were too deeply grafted in her mind to permit of her being rapidly converted by acquaintance with our sentiments and usages--very illogical as they often appeared to her mind--to a different view of woman's destiny. According to her laws and her religion, I was her master. She could never have entertained the possibility of her refusing to submit to my will; but I could see by the tears in her eyes that this very touching submission and resignation on her part was simply due to her devoted self-control, and that she suffered cruelly by it. "Come, why do you keep on crying?" I continued, drawing her into my arms. "Do you doubt my love, dear?" "Oh, no!" she replied quickly. "How could I mistrust you?" "Well, then, away with those tears!"