“I don’t think this is wise, child,” I said, turning once more to Eveena.  To my amazement, far from having recovered the effect of her surprise, she was yet more overcome than at first; crouching among the cushions with her head bent down over her knees, and covering her face with her hands.  Reclining in the soft pile, I held her in my arms, overcoming perforce what seemed hysterical reluctance; but when I would have withdrawn the little hands, she threw herself on my knee, burying her face in the cushions.

“It is very wicked,” she sobbed; “I cannot ask you to forgive me.”

“Forgive what, my child?  Eveena, you are certainly ill.  Calm yourself, and don’t try to talk just now.”

“I am not ill, I assure you,” she faltered, resisting the arm that sought to raise her; “but ...”

In my hands, however, she was powerless as an infant; and I would hear nothing till I held her gathered within my arm and her two hands fast in my right.  Now that I could look into the face she strove to avert, it was clear that she was neither hysterical nor simply ill; her agitation, however unreasonable and extravagant, was real.

“What troubles you, my own?  I promise you not to say one word of reproach; I only want to understand with what you so bitterly reproach yourself.”

“But you cannot help being angry,” she urged, “if you understand what I have done.  It is the charny, which I never tasted till that night, and never ought to have tasted again.  I know you cannot forgive me; only take my fault for granted, and don’t question me.”

These incoherent words threw the first glimpse of light on the meaning of her distress and penitence.  I doubt if the best woman in Christendom would so reproach and abase herself, if convicted of even a worse sin than the secret use of those stimulants for which the charny is a Martial equivalent.  No Martialist would dream of poisoning his blood and besotting his brain with alcohol in any form.  But their opiates affect a race addicted to physical repose, to sensuous enjoyment rather than to sensual excitement, and to lucid intellectual contemplation, with a sense of serene delight as supremely delicious to their temperament as the dreamy illusions of haschisch to the Turk, the fierce frenzy of bhang to the Malay, or the wild excitement of brandy or Geneva to the races of Northern Europe.  But as with the luxury of intoxication in Europe, so in Mars indulgence in these drugs, freely permitted to the one sex, is strictly forbidden by opinion and domestic rule to the other.  A lady discovered in the use of charny is as deeply disgraced as an European matron detected in the secret enjoyment of spirits and cigars; and her lord and master takes care to render her sufficiently conscious of her fault.