he tears started to her eyes. He saw them in
the light of the lamp in the kitchen and kissed her with a fresh access
of emotion. He did not imagine the cause of them. She stared at him
through their brightness and smiled, her bosom heaving. She knew he
would never never realize they were tears of anger, and were evoked by
the perception of the helplessness of women in a world of predatory men.

But above and beyond this terrible abstract indignation she found
herself regarding him at intervals with smouldering eyes because of a
certain subtle complacency in his manner. She could not know that this
was the habit of years, or that men of his race are invariably
complacent in the presence of their women. She could not conceive him in
any role in which he had the right to be complacent. Yet he combined it
with a tender humility that was very sweet to her in her situation out
there on the hillside, playing for a hazardous stake. It was then she
would look at him in stupefaction, wondering if she were going mad, and
she afterwards would take the young Jew by the hair, dragging his head
this way and that, and mutter between her clenched teeth: "_Mon Dieu! Je
deteste les hommes!_" And he, poor youth, would assume an expression of
pallid horror, for he had no idea what she was talking about, and
imagined he had failed to carry out some of her imperious commands.

"Oh, Madama, what has thy servant done to deserve this?" he would
whimper, less certain than ever of the solidity of his fortunes. And she
would look at him, her hand dropping to her side as she gave a little
laugh.

"Did I hurt you?" she would chuckle, and he would explain that she had
not.

"But when Madama speaks in that strange tongue her servant is afraid he
has not done his errand in the town as she desires."

"Tck! Go every day. You will find him soon."

"If Madama gave me a letter...."

"And some great fool of an Osmanli soldier would go through thy pockets,
and lock thee up in the jail on Mount Pagos with all the other Jews. And
who would write the letter? You? Can you write?"

"Very little, Madama," he muttered, trembling.

"And I cannot write at all, though I don't tell anybody. I could never
learn. I read, yes; the large words in the cinemas; but not letters. Let
us forget that. You have the picture?"

"Ah, Madama, it is next my heart!"

He would bring it out, unfolding a fragment of paper, and show her a
photograph about as large as a stamp, an