Suddenly Shelek Pasha saw the dark-blue eyes fastened upon his face
with a curious intentness, a strange questioning; and the blue of the
turquoise on the hand folded over the other in the grey lap did not quite
reassure him. He stopped talking, and spoke in a low voice to his
kavass, who presently brought a bottle of champagne--a final proof that
Shelek Pasha was not an ascetic or a Turk. As the bottle was being
opened the Pasha took up his string of beads and began to finger them,
for the blue eyes in the poke bonnet were disconcerting. He was about to
speak when Hope said, in a clear voice:

"Thee has a strange people beneath thee. Thee rules by the sword,
or the word of peace, friend?" The fat, smooth hands fingered the beads
swiftly. Shelek Pasha was disturbed, as he proved by replying in French
--he had spent years of his youth in France: "Par la force morale,
toujours, madame--by moral force, always," he hastened to add in English.
Then, casting down his eyes with truly Armenian modesty, he continued in
Arabic: "By the word of peace, oh woman of the clear eyes--to whom God
give length of days!"

Shelek Pasha smiled a greasy smile, and held the bottle of champagne over
the glass set for friend David.

Never in his life had David the Quaker tasted champagne. In his eyes, in
the eyes of Framley, it had been the brew especially prepared by Sheitan
to tempt to ruin the feeble ones of the earth. But the doublet of
David's mind was all unbraced now; his hat was off, his Quaker drab was
spotted with the grease of a roasted lamb. He had tasted freedom; he was
near to license now.