“Will you ever forgive me—­” I began.

But the sight of her face froze me.  It was white and hard and haggard, and the lips were drawn into a thin line, and the delicate colour she had put upon her cheeks stood out in ghastly contrast.  Her dress, like the foam of a summer sea, mocked the winter in her face.

“There is nothing to forgive,” she said, smiling icily.  “I came for a variety entertainment and I have not been disappointed.  Good-bye.  Perhaps Mr. Pasquale will be so kind as to put me into a cab.”

“I will drive you home, if you will allow me,” said Pasquale.

We separated, shaking hands as if nothing had happened, as perfunctorily as if we had been the most distant of acquaintances.

On our way back we spoke very little.  Carlotta nestled close against me, seeking the shelter of my arm.  She cried, I don’t know why, but it seemed to afford comfort.  I kissed her lips and her hair.

At home, I drew the sofa near the fire—­it has been a raw night and she feels the cold like a tropical plant—­and sat down by her side.

“Did you hear what I said to Hamdi Effendi—­that you were my wife?”

“But that was only a lie,” she answered in her plain idiom.

My petting and soothing together with the sense of home security and a cup of French chocolate prepared by Antoinette, who, astonished at our early return and seeing her darling in distress, had hastened to provide culinary consolation, had restored her wonted serenity of demeanour.  Polyphemus also purred reassuringly upon her lap.

“It was a lie this evening,” said I, “but in a few days I hope it will be true.”

“You are going to marry me?” she asked, suddenly sitting erect and looking at me rather bewildered.

“If you will have me, Carlotta.”

“I will do what Seer Marcous tells me,” she answered.  “Will you marry me to-morrow?”

“I think it hardly possible, my dear,” I answered.  “But I shall lose no time, I assure you.  Once you are my wife neither Hamdi Effendi nor the Sultan of Turkey can claim you.  No one can take an Englishman’s wife away from him.”

“Hamdi is a devil,” said Carlotta.

“We can laugh at him,” said I.

“Did you ever see such an ugly mug?”

Where she gets her occasional bits of slang from I do not know; but her little foreign staccato pronunciation gives them unusual quaintness.  I laughed, and Carlotta, throwing Polyphemus off her lap, laughed too, and sidled up against me.  The cat regarded us for a moment with a disgusted eye, then stretched himself as if he had quitted Carlotta of his own accord, and walked away in a state of dignified boredom.

“Hamdi is like a pig and an elephant and a great fat turkey,” said Carlotta.

“If all the world were beautiful,” I exclaimed, “such a thing as our appreciation of beauty would not exist.  I should not even be aware that my Carlotta was beautiful.”