She laughed mockingly, and Mahmoud shivered, for this laugh was often the precursor of taunts that could never be recalled or forgotten, and of having his beard rent, his turban knocked off, and his lips--the same lips at whose utterance his brigade of three thousand Mahomediyes trembled--beaten with the heel of her tiny slipper. But she began to storm as was her wont; and then, while her husband's fingers went into the pillau from time to time, there began their usual taunting discussion, with quotations from the Koran, "which, as all the world knows, or ought to know," continued the Hadji, "is the one and only book for laws, civil, moral, religious, and domestic." "Doth not the Prophet say," she exclaimed, closing the slender tips of her henna-dyed fingers, "in the fourth chapter entitled 'Women,' and revealed at Mecca, act with equity towards them?" "Yes; but he adds, 'If ye act not with equity towards orphans of the female sex, take in marriage such other as please you, two, three, or four; but not more." "So--so; and your fancy was for a slave!" "_Was?_" stammered Mahmoud; then he added, defiantly, yet tremulous with apprehension the while, "A Circassian, whose skin is as the egg of an ostrich--her hair as a shower of sunbeams." "This to me!" she exclaimed; and starting from the divan, she smote him thrice on the mouth with the heel of her embroidered slipper. The eyes of the Pasha flashed fire; yet remembering who she was, he sighed and restrained his futile wrath, and said, "If you will quote the Prophet, remember that he says in chapter iv., 'Men shall have pre-eminence above women, because of those advantages wherein God hath caused one of them to excel the other.'" Djemila laughed derisively and fanned herself. "Who dared to tell you of this slave girl?" asked Mahmoud, glancing nervously at the pretty little slipper; "who, I demand?" "The wire of the Infidels, that passes over men's houses, and reveals the secrets of all things therein--even those of the harem," said she, laughing, but with fierce triumph now; "yea, telling more than is known by the Munadjim Bashee himself." The Pasha knew not what to say to this; he quaffed some sherbet to keep himself cool, and then ground his teeth, resolving, if he dared, to have all the telegraph wires in his neighbourhood cut down; indeed, about this time, such was the terror the Turks had of those mysterious speaking wires, that in Constantinople, to prevent their destruction as telltales, a few human heads were placed upon the supporting poles by order of Stamboul Effendi, or chief of the police. "Thou shalt be stoned by order of my brother, and according to the holy law!" said Djemila, her proud lips curling and quivering. "Woman, she is but a slave--an odalisque!" "Whom you would marry before the kadi?" "Yes," said Mahmoud, through his teeth, for his temper was rising fast. "And you love her?"