Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/119

 could sit up, I took advantage of her devoted attendance to question her.

"What have you done so monstrous and wicked, which Allah must forgive you?"

After a moment's thought, she answered me, simply and directly.

"I gave not myself to a man, as Allah ordains that every woman should do, and I have given no children to multiply the world."

For hours I puzzled over these words; but in the end I did get at their meaning. New vistas, new horizons opened to my brain. What she meant, of course, was that she was not married.

In the middle of that night I awoke—and I woke her too. I sat up in bed, determined to ask, till all was told to me.

"Then why don't you marry?" I demanded peremptorily.

"Now, yavroum, you go to sleep. You are only a baby, and you cannot understand."

"I'm not a baby!" I cried. "I know heaps and heaps of things, and if you don't tell me, I shall not go to sleep—and what is more I shall uncover myself and catch my death of cold. So please tell me why you don't marry."

"I don't want to."

"Why not?"

"Because he whose children I should have been happy to bear is for ever buried, beyond that hill, in the forest of Belgrade."