Marie in the Moslem Quarter
She developed a tyrannic devotion to me which was
not only embarrassing, but also gave an uncomfortable
sense of instability, like the affections of a tiger. If I went
out to dinner, I returned to find her plunged in gloom.
She lived in extremes, always either excessively truculent
or exceedingly humble, so that life among our Moslem
neighbours was complicated far more than it need have
been, and I was sometimes exasperated into feeling that
the chief cause of Armenian atrocities must be the Arme-
nians. " One day they will murder us," she would say,
peering down at the harmless and friendly greengrocer
below. She would flash out with her basket in the
morning, flaunting the eight gold bracelets which were her
only capital and on which she counted for a rainy day,
casting glances and repartee right and left to the shop-
keepers' assistants, and stepping with an added provocative
jauntiness past the chairs where a little congregation of
Elders always sat and contemplated at the corner of the
street. They, with unblinking eyes fixed disapprovingly
on her feet, no doubt thought of her as did Isaiah of the
ladies of Jerusalem. They never greeted her nor she them,
though to me they would answer with their blessing of peace.
" One day they will murder me for these," Marie would
say, coming back from the markets and shaking the twisted
gold on her thin tattooed arms.