y her fears;
"nothing is true but this, that I mean to love you always, and always to
live with you as I do now."

"But this marriage?" she again repeated.

It was impossible for me to escape any longer from the necessity of
making a confession which I had intended to have prepared her for later
on.

"Listen, my darling," I said, taking her by the hands, "and above all
things trust me as you listen to me! I love you, I love no one but you;
you are my wife, my happiness, my life. Do you believe me?"

"Yes, dear, I believe you. But what about her?" she added in a tremble.
"What about Anna Campbell? Are you going to marry her?"

"Come," I said, wishing to begin by soothing her fears; "if, as so often
happens in your own country, I were obliged, if only in order to assure
our own happiness, to make another marriage, would not you understand
that this was only a sacrifice which I owed to my uncle if he required
it of me--a family arrangement, in fact, which could not separate us
from each other? What have you to fear so long as I only love you? Did
you trouble yourself about Hadidje or Zouhra?"

"Oh, but they were not Christians! Anna Campbell would be your real
wife; and your religion and laws would enjoin you to love her."

"No," I exclaimed, "neither my religion nor my laws could change my
heart or undo my love for you. It is my duty to protect your life and
make it a happy one; for are not you also my wife? Why should you alarm
yourself about an obligation of mine which, if we lived in your country,
would not disturb your confidence in me? Anna Campbell is not really in
love with me: we are only like two friends, prepared to unite with each
other in a conventional union, such as you may see many a couple around
us enter upon--an association of fortunes, in which the only personal
sentiments demanded are reciprocal esteem. My dear girl, what is there
to be jealous of? Don't you know that you will always be everything to
me?"

Poor Kondje-Gul listened to these somewhat strange projects without the
least idea of opposing them. Still under the yoke of her native ideas,
those Oriental prejudices in which she had been brought up were too
deeply grafted in her mind to permit of her being rapidly converted by
acquaintance with our sentiments and usages--very illogical as they
often appeared to her mind--to a different view of woman's destiny.
According to her laws and her religion, I was her master. She could
never hav