"Why not?" said the American. "It would have been an act of _self-defense_. The man meant to kill me. He will kill me still if I give him the chance. What is the difference between murder in a moment and murder after five, ten, fifteen, twenty days? Only that one is murder in hot blood and haste and the other is murder in cold blood and by stealth. Is it life that you think so precious? Then why should I value _his_ life more than I value _my own_?" I shivered, and could say nothing. "You think me a monster," said the American, "but remember, since we left England the atmosphere has changed." "Remember, too," I said, "that this man can do you no harm unless you intrude yourself upon his superstitions again. Leave the country immediately; depend upon it, he is following you." "That's not possible," said the American, "for _I_ am following _him_. Until I come up with him I can do nothing, and my existence is not worth a pin's purchase." I shuddered, and we parted. My mind told me that he was right, but my heart clamored above the voice of reason and said, "_You_ could not do it, no, not to save a hundred lives." Ah, father, how little we know ourselves--how little, oh, how little! When I think that _he_ shrank back--he who held life so cheap--while _I_--I who held it so dear, so sacred, so god-like--Bear with me; I will tell all. I met the American at intervals during the next six days. We did not often speak, but as we passed in the streets--he alone, I always with my loquacious interpreter--I observed with dread the change that the shadow of death hanging over a man's head can bring to pass in his face and manner. He grew thin and sallow and wild-eyed. One day he stopped me, and said: "I know now what your Buckshot Forster died of," and then he went on without another word. But about ten days after our first meeting in the slave market he stopped me again, and said, quite cheerfully: "He has gone home--I'm satisfied of that now." "Thank God!" I answered involuntarily. "Ah," he said, with a twinkle of the eye, "who says that a man must hang up his humanity on the peg with his hat in the hospital hall when he goes to be a surgeon? If the poet Keats had got over the first shock to his sensibilities, he might have been the greatest surgeon of his day." "You'll be more careful in future," I said, "not to cross the fanaticism of these fanatics?" He smiled, and asked if I knew the Karueein Mosque. I told him I had seen it. "It is the greatest in Morocco," he said. "The Moors say the inner court stands on eight hundred pillars. I don't believe them, and I mean to see for myself." I found it useless to protest, and he went his way, laughing at my blanched and bewildered face. "That man," I thought, "is fit to be the hero of a tragedy, and he is wasting himself on a farce."