Fair Margaret - Page 68/206

'You forget that I am a real artist, with a real engagement!' she

answered.

'Yes, I forgot that. I wanted to! I can make Schreiermeyer forget it,

too, if you will come. I'll hypnotise him. Will you authorise me?' He smiled pleasantly but his long eyes were quite grave. Margaret

supposed that it would be absurd to suspect anything but chaff in his

proposal, and yet she felt an odd conviction that he meant what he

said. Only vain women are easily mistaken about such things. Margaret

turned the point with another little laugh.

'If you put him to sleep he will hibernate, like a dormouse,' she said.

'It will take a whole year to wake him up!' 'I don't think so, but what if it did?' 'I should be a year older, and I am not too young as it is! I'm

twenty-two.' 'It's only in Constantinople that they are so particular about age,'

laughed the Greek. 'After seventeen the price goes down very fast.' 'Really?' Margaret was amused. 'What do you suppose I should be worth

in Turkey?' Logotheti looked at her gravely and seemed to be estimating her value.

'If you were seventeen, you would be worth a good thousand pounds,' he

said presently, 'and at least three hundred more for your singing.' 'Is that all, for my voice?' She could not help laughing. 'And at

twenty-two, what should I sell for?' 'I doubt whether any one would give much more than eight hundred for

you,' answered Logotheti with perfect gravity. 'That's a big price, you

know. In Persia they give less. I knew a Persian ambassador, for

instance, who got a very handsome wife for four hundred and fifty.' 'Are you in earnest?' asked Margaret. 'Do you mean to say that you

could just go out and buy yourself a wife in the market in

Constantinople?' 'I could not, because I am a Christian. The market exists in a quiet

place where Europeans never find it. You see all the Circassians in

Turkey live by stealing horses and selling their daughters. They are a

noble race, the Circassians! The girls are brought up with the idea,

and they rarely dislike it at all.' 'I never heard of such things!' 'No. The East is very interesting. Will you come? I'll take you

wherever you like. We will leave the archæologists in Crete and go on

to Constantinople. It will be the most beautiful season on the

Bosphorus, you know, and after that we will go along the southern shore

of the Black Sea to Samsoun, and Kerasund, and Trebizond, and round by

the Crimea. There are wonderful towns on the shores of the Black Sea

which hardly any European ever sees. I'm sure you would like them, just

as I do.' 'I am sure I should.' 'You love beautiful things, don't you?' 'Yes--though I don't pretend to be a judge.' 'I do. And when I see anything that really pleases me, I always try to

get it; and if I succeed, nothing in the world will induce me to part

with it. I'm a miser about the things I like. I keep them in safe

places, and it gives me pleasure to look at them when I'm alone.' 'That's not very generous. You might give others a little pleasure,

too, now and then.' 'So few people know what is good! Some of us Greeks have the instinct

in our blood still, and we recognise it in a few men and women we

meet--you are one, for instance. As soon as I saw you the first time, I

was quite sure that we should think alike about a great many things. Do

you mind my saying as much as that, at a second meeting?' 'Not if you think it is true,' she answered with a smile. 'Why should

I?' 'It might sound as if I were trying to make out that we have some

natural bond of sympathy,' said Logotheti. 'That's a favourite way of

opening the game, you know. "Do you like carrots? So do I"--a bond, at

once! "Do you go in, when it rains? I always do"--second bond. "We must

be sympathetic to each other! Do you smile when you are pleased? Of

course! We are exactly alike, and our hearts beat in unison!" That's

the sort of thing.' He amused her; perhaps she was easily amused now, because she had been

feeling rather depressed all the morning. Women are subject to such

harmless self-contradictions.