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 CHAPTER XV

MY LADY OF THE FOUNTAIN

The following year I was sent to Paris for my studies, where I was to remain three whole years, without returning home; yet on my first summer holidays my mother changed her mind and sent for me. That summer, too, we were not to spend at our home on the island, but in Pantich, an adorable, sleepy, little Turkish village, on the Asiatic shore of the Marmora.

Pantich is as far behind the rest of Turkey as the rest of Turkey is behind Europe. Its traditions are those of the Byzantine period, when Constantinople was the capital of the Greek Empire. The Turkish quarters cluster around the Tzami, which is built in a square of plantain trees, with a fountain in the middle. The Greek houses make a belt around their little Orthodox Church, with a school on its right and a cemetery on its left.

And though the Turks and the Greeks are divided like the goats and the sheep, all men wear the fez, and all women veil their faces.

Only one event ever happened in Pantich: