PLEASANT LIFE OF CONSTANTINOPLE 101
beauty meant other things to them. I could see the
shimmer of their long white silk gowns as their bodies,
ripe and supple, swung as they rowed. White silk scarfs
were over their hair and wound round their necks so
that they seemed like hoods. In the half light their
eyes looked out black and alluring and enticing. I was
caught by a subtle attraction, by curiosity, by the lure
for the forbidden and the unknown, by the pulse and
tingle of desire. I was dealing with unknown worlds in
shadows. Behind them seemed mystery and the East.
Yet in the moonlight their skins gleamed as white as
any Saxon's. As they spoke there was none of the
harsh gutturals of the Arab. The scent of them was
the scent of powdered Paris, and not the greasy odours
of the East. Yet, except desire, between us there was
nothing in common, neither religion nor language, nor
habits nor morals.
I found the Greeks and Armenians liberal in their
favours. Their soirees and tea-parties were gay. They
chattered in the ugly French of Pera or in pidgin English
and broke off at times into their own hoarse languages.
They were full of clumsy subtleties and crude doiible-
entendres. Spoken with every conceivable accent the
word " shocking " appeared to be the dominant feature
of their lives. Even at their pleasantest they were
irritating. They had an ulterior motive of gain in every
action. They irritated because they aped the European.
They played at being of the West and civilized, but
between them and the European was a gulf as wide as
that between the Turk and the British, and it had no
subtlety or charm or mystery to hide it.