Page:A child of the Orient (IA childoforient00vakarich).pdf/202

 leaving the little one motherless. How cruel! How cruel! And yet Allah must be just."

After this event a great change came over her. She was not sad, since it is forbidden Turkish women to continue their sadness for more than a day or two; yet she was not herself. She was constantly thinking, and her thoughts were not restful. I felt that she did not wish me, and stayed away.

Then she sent for me. I found her in her own room, writing, the floor littered with torn paper.

"Oh, yavroum!" she exclaimed, "I am trying to compose a letter, but it does not come. I have never composed one before. How do you do it?"

"You simply say what you have to say."

"And if what you have to say is that for which your heart cries, how do you say it?"

"You say it in the words your heart uses."

She pondered my advice.

"Yes, yes, you are right. Make no phrases. Just sit down, yavroum." She wrote feverishly, and in a few minutes gave a sigh. "It is done!"

She folded the paper and put it in her bosom. She was very nice to me, but said nothing further of the letter, and refused to read any French.

Leila came and played to her, and I went home without learning anything more about it. As it was now the middle of September, and we were to go in ten days, I had my own preparations to