"Never, by the goodness of God, never," answered David.

"Neither in punishment nor in battle?"

"I am neither judge nor soldier, friend."

"Inshallah, thou hast yet far to go! Thou art young yet. Who can tell?"

"I have never so far to go as that, friend," said David, in a voice that
rang a little.

"To-morrow is no man's gift."

David was about to answer, but chancing to raise his eyes above the
Prince Pasha's head, his glance was arrested and startled by seeing a
face--the face of a woman-looking out of a panel in a mooshrabieh screen
in a gallery above. He would not have dwelt upon the incident, he would
have set it down to the curiosity of a woman of the harem, but that the
face looking out was that of an English girl, and peering over her
shoulder was the dark, handsome face of an Egyptian or a Turk.

Self-control was the habit of his life, the training of his faith,
and, as a rule, his face gave little evidence of inner excitement.
Demonstration was discouraged, if not forbidden, among the Quakers, and
if, to others, it gave a cold and austere manner, in David it tempered to
a warm stillness the powerful impulses in him, the rivers of feeling
which sometimes roared through his veins.

Only Nahoum Pasha had noticed his arrested look, so motionless did he