"And when I urged that we were all taught to love one another—all Christians, at all events—she cried, ’What! and share one man between four of you?’ In short, the condition was only possible to cocks and hens, and that Eastern women could put up with it showed they were creatures—simple creatures, content and happy if their husbands (beg pardon, their Masters) gave them equal presents of dresses and jewels and Turkish delight. No, let the woman of the East keep a little longer to her harem window, her closed carriage, and the wisp of mousseline de soie she calls her veil, or she’ll misuse her liberty. ’Oh, I know! I say what I think! I don’t care!’ "As for your Ishmael, the Princess wouldn’t have him at any price. He’s just another Mahdi, and if he’s championing the cause of women, the son of a duck knows how to swim. His predecessor began by denouncing slavery and ended by being the biggest slave-dealer in the Soudan. Ergo, your Ishmael, who cares neither for ’the frowns of men nor the smiles of women,’ is going to finish up like Solomon or Samson either as the tyrant of a hundred women or the victim of one of them whose heart is snares and nets. ’Oh, I know! Every man is a Sultan to himself, and the tail of a dog is never straight!’ "But as for you it seems you are ’a brother of girls,’ which being interpreted means you are a man to whom God has given a clean heart to love all women as his sisters, and courage and strength to fight for their protection. ’Didn’t I tell you that you had the best of the bunch, my child?’ (She did, Serenity!) ’But though he is a soldier and as brave as a lion he has too much of the woman in him.’ In this respect you resemble, it seems, one of the Princess’s own husbands, but having had a variety of them, both right- and left-handed, she found a difficulty in fixing your prototype. ’My first husband was like that—or no, it was my second—or perhaps it was one of the other ones.’ "But this being so, O virtuous one, it became my duty to get you back from Alexandria as speedily as possible. ’Love like the sparrows comes and goes! Oh, I know! I’ve seen it myself, my child!’ "’And listen, my moon! Don’t allow your Gordon’ (she calls you Gourdan) ’to go against his father. Nuneham is the greatest man in the world, but let anybody cross him—_mon Dieu_! If you go out as the wind you meet the whirlwind, and serve you right, too!’ "In complete agreement on this point, the Princess and I were parting in much kindness when Father came dashing into my drawing-room like a gust of the Khamseen, having just had a telephone message from the Consul-General requiring him to go down to the Agency without delay. Whereupon, with a word or two of apology to the Princess and a rumbling subterranean growl of ’Don’t know what the d— that young man...’ he picked up your letter to himself and was gone in a moment.