“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked, softly, and Charlie awoke out of a reverie, and made haste to answer that it was heavenly.
“I have longed for this all my life,” said Cecil, “and Lady Haigh says that Baghdad will be even better.”
“More Eastern, you know,” said Cecil, “but I can’t imagine anything more perfect than this.”
“I see that you are one of the people who feel the fascination of the East,” said he.
“Who could help it?” asked Cecil. “It is a fascination, there is no other word for it. Kingsley says that a longing for the West is bound up in the hearts of men, but I think that in this age of the world the reverse is true. I daresay if I had ever been in America it would be different; but now it seems to me that all the romance is gone from the West, and that it is all big towns, and gold-mines, and wonderful inventions, and rush. The East seems so mysterious and reposeful, so old, too, and so picturesque.”
“And yet,” said Charlie, “you want to change it all, and import into it the newest ideas in religions and the latest Yankee culture. You would like all those mysterious veiled women, with the beautiful eyes, whom you saw to-day, to be turned into learned ladies in tweed frocks and hard hats, with spectacles and short hair.”
“No, indeed,” said Cecil, “that is not my ideal at all. A modification of their own style of dress would be much more suitable to them than a bad copy of ours. And they couldn’t all be learned, but they all ought to know a good deal more than they can at present, poor things! If they were only better educated, it would be much easier to introduce reforms Denarien Bey says that most of Ahmed Khémi Pasha’s plans are thwarted by his harem.”
Charlie groaned. “I beg your pardon, Miss Anstruther,” he said, “but my feelings were too much for me. An Eastern I can respect, a European I can pity, but a Europeanised, Europeanising Turk like Ahmed Khémi I can only detest.”
“I can’t hear my employer spoken against in that way,” said Cecil.
“Your employer? So he is. Well, Miss Anstruther, I can forgive him anything, since he is bringing you to Baghdad.”
Cecil frowned. “I really cannot imagine,” she said, severely, “how a person like yourself, who admires quiet so intensely, can talk so much.”