Paula, who till now had stood motionless in front of the old man, shook her head and said bitterly: 

“But all this will not give me back my father and brother.  You yourself look like a kind-hearted man; but for the future—­if you are as just as you are kind—­find out to whom you are speaking before you talk of the compassion of the Moslems!”

She once more bowed good-night and left the room.  Orion followed her; come what might he must see her.  But he returned a few minutes after, breathing hard and with his teeth set.  He had taken her hand, had tried to tell her all a loving heart could find to say; but how sharply, how icily had he been repulsed, with what an air of intolerable scorn had she turned her back upon him!  And now that he was in their midst again he scarcely heard his father express his regrets that so painful a scene should have occurred under his roof, while the Arab said that he could quite understand why the daughter of Thomas should have been betrayed to anger:  the massacre of Abyla was quite inexcusable.

“But then,” the old man went on, “in what war do not such things take place?  Even the Christian is not always master of himself:  you yourself I know, lost two promising sons—­and who were the murderers?  Christians —­your own fellow-believers. . .”

“The bitterest foes of my beliefs,” said the governor slowly, and every syllable was a calm and dignified reproof to the Moslem for supposing that the creed of those who had killed his sons could be his.  As he spoke he opened his eyes wide with the look of those hard, opaquely-glittering stones which his ancestors had been wont to set for eyes in their portrait statues.  But he suddenly closed them again and said indifferently: 

“At what price do you value your hanging?  I have a fancy to buy it.  Name your lowest terms:  I cannot bear to bargain.”

“I had thought of asking five hundred thousand drachmae,” said the dealer.  “Four hundred thousand drachmae, and it is yours.”

The governor’s wife clasped her hands at such a sum and made warning signals to her husband, shaking her head disapprovingly, when Orion, making a great effort to show that he too took an interest in this important transaction, said:  “It may be worth three hundred thousand.”

“Four hundred thousand,” repeated the merchant coolly.  “Your father wished to know the lowest price, and I am asking no more than is right.  The rubies and garnets in these grapes, the pearls in the myrtle blossoms, the turquoises in the forget-me-nots, the diamonds hanging as dew on the grass, the emeralds which give brilliancy to the green leaves —­this one especially, which is an immense stone—­alone are worth more.”

“Then why do you not cut them out of the tissue?” asked Neforis.

“Because I cannot bear to destroy this noble work,” replied the Arab.  “I will sell it as it is or not at all.”  At these words the Mukaukas nodded to his son, heedless of the disapprobation his wife persisted in expressing, asked for a tablet which lay near the chessboard, and on it wrote a few words.