But the less agreeable a supposed duty, the more resolute was Eveena to fulfil it.

“They were meant to recall a saying familiar in every school and household,” she said:—­

  “’Sandal loosed and well-clasped zone—­
    Childhood spares the woman grown. 
    Change the clasps, and woman yet
    Pays with interest childhood’s debt.’”

“This”—­tightening and relaxing the clasp of her zone—­“is the symbol of stricter or more indulgent household rule.”  Then bending so as to avert her face, she unclasped her embroidered sandal and gave it into my hand;—­“and this is what, I suppose, you would call its sanction.”

“There is more to be said for the sandal than I supposed, bambina, if it have helped to make you what you are.  But you may tell Zulve that its work and hers are done.”

Kneeling before her, I kissed, with more studied reverence than the sacred stone of the Caaba, the tiny foot on which I replaced its covering.

“Baby as she thinks and I call you, Eveena, you are fast unteaching me the lesson which, before you were born and ever since, the women of the Earth have done their utmost to impress indelibly upon my mind—­the lesson that woman is but a less lovable, more petulant, more deeply and incurably spoilt child.  Your mother’s reproach is an exact inversion of the truth.  No one could have acted with more utter unselfishness, more devoted kindness, more exquisite delicacy than you have shown in this miserable matter.  I could not have believed that even you could have put aside your own feelings so completely, could have recognised so promptly that I was not in fault, have thought so exclusively of what was best and safe for me in the first place, and next of what was kind and just and generous to your rivals.  I never thought such reasonableness and justice possible to feminine nature; and if I cannot love you more dearly, you have taught me how deeply to admire and honour you.  I accept the situation, since you will have it so; be as just and considerate henceforward as you have been to-night, and trust me that it shall bring no shadow between us—­shall never make you less to me than you are now.”

“But it must,” she insisted.  “I cannot now be other than one wife among many; and what place I hold among them is, remember, for you and you alone to fix.  No rule, no custom, obliges you to give any preference in form or fact to one, merely because you chanced to marry her first.”

“Such, nevertheless, did not seem to be the practice in your father’s house.  Your mother was as distinctly wife and mistress as if his sole companion.”

“My father,” she replied, “did not marry a second time till within my own memory; and it was natural and usual to give the first place to one so much older and more experienced.  I have no such claim, and when you see my companions you may find good reason to think that I am the least fit of all to take the first place.  Nor,” she added, drawing me from the room, “do I wish it.  If only you will keep in your mind one little place for the memory of our visit to your vessel and your promise respecting it, I shall be more than content.”