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 to get it, and that some one else would pay for it.

"It is her Greek blood that makes her so," Chakendé said one noon; then looked up at me in fear; but at these words Djimlah declared that it was time to pray, and they all fell on their knees, facing Mecca. They knew I would not attack them while they were praying, and they made their devotions long enough for my anger to cool somewhat.

The legend about her Greek blood was that her grandmother had been taken from the island of Cyprus, when a baby, and sold into a haremlik. Semmeya told us that only after she was married and had children did her grandmother learn that she was a Greek; and then she hanged herself from despair. Perhaps this matter of the Greek grandmother helped to make Semmeya dear to me, although now, as I look back upon it all, I think it was because instinctively I understood a little of the curse of temperament, and poor Semmeya had a large share of it.

The following year Semmeya was married, and three days before her wedding we were invited to see her trousseau, and to be feasted and presented with gifts. We had reached the age when we began to talk of love and marriage in tones of awe, with the ignorance of children and the half