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 CHAPTER XI

MISDEEDS

I did miss Djimlah and Chakendé and Nashan, yet the halaïc made up for a great deal, and what is more, knowing now that some day she would go to heaven and meet her Greek lover, I was telling her the Greek history, or rather that part of the Greek history where the Greeks were intermarrying with the gods.

It is a pity that the world should be so large, and that we should have to go from place to place, leaving behind those we have learned to love. When the time arrived for me to go back to the island, I wept copiously. I did so mind leaving behind Sitanthy and especially the halaïc. She, however, in spite of the sorrow she felt at bidding me good-bye, kept on saying: "Think, yavroum, you might never have come, and that would have been far worse. Besides we must submit to Allah's will gladly, and not weep and show him our unwillingness to obey."

It is three hours from the Bosphorus to the islands, by going from the Bosphorus to Constantinople, and from Constantinople to the islands. Tears kept on coming to my eyes from time to