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Updated: May 9, 2025
Until then spare me these insults, or I come no more to thee." At this threat that strange woman heaved herself up from her soft couch. She ran to him and flung her arms about his neck, set her cheek against his own. Not eighteen years in the Basha's hareem had stifled the European mother in her, the passionate Sicilian woman, fierce as a tiger in her maternal love.
She watched his departure with anger in those dark lovely eyes of hers, an anger that went near to filming them in tears, and after he had passed out into the glaring sunshine beyond the door, a silence dwelt in the cool darkened chamber a silence disturbed only by distant trills of silvery laughter from the lesser women of the Basha's house. The sound jarred her taut nerves.
Finally, there was the Kadi, Mohammed ben Arby, but the judge was an official outside his jurisdiction, and he wanted a man who should be under his hand. That was the combination of circumstances whereby Israel came to Tetuan. Israel's first years in his strange office had satisfied his master entirely. He had carried the Basha's seal and acted for him in all affairs of money.
Appropriately huge ornamental letter-press declared her to be "The Basha's Favourite;" and it was on the first act of "The Basha's Favourite" that the audience was now waiting for the curtain to rise. And at this moment of culminating excitement the scene impressed Morgan curiously. His mood was essentially one of romance.
She said she was just a little tired, but her face was jubilant as she handed him two weekly papers that had appeared that day containing laudatory notices of "The Basha's Favourite," In spite of her attempting to appear calm, he could see she was very much excited about them, and when he had read the strings of unblushing falsehood and handed them back to her in silence, she lovingly let her eye run over them again.
Arrived at the city gate, it was shut. I had a strange wait alone with Tahara and Maman, while S`lam fetched a soldier to unbar the gate. The basha's leave had to be got, and the basha sent to the English Vice-Consul to ask if it was his will that the gate should be opened for a British subject. Eventually we got through, all except Maman, who said good-night and went home.
Another lantern swung from the mainmast, and yet another from the poop-rail for the Basha's convenience. Overhead the clustering stars glittered in a cloudless sky of deepest purple. The wind had fallen entirely, and the world was wrapped in stillness broken only by the faint rustling break of waves upon the beach at the cove's end.
The Basha sat in the shade of an awning enthroned upon a divan, attended by his wazeer Tsamanni and by Marzak, and guarded by a half-dozen janissaries, whose sable garments made an effective background to the green and gold of his jewelled robes. In his white turban glowed an emerald crescent. The Basha's countenance was dark and brooding as he watched the advent of that line of burdened camels.
It was this very affection of the Basha's for his lieutenant that was the fomenter of her own hate of Sakr-el-Bahr, for it was an affection that transcended Asad's love for his own son and hers, and it led to the common rumour that for Sakr-el-Bahr was reserved the high destiny of succeeding Asad in the Bashalik. "I tell thee thou'rt abused by him, O source of my life."
It was, indeed, an illumining perception when it struck Morgan that their absurd movements and struttings and the queen-like way in which they tried to hold their heads bore a singular resemblance to the stage-gestures of "The Basha's Favourite." At the same time they possessed a large fund of animal spirits.
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