"
"No, Masa, do not go. I did not intend to mock you; I really had so
much to say to you! Yet I know not how it is with me; it seems to me
that if I have been transformed, created anew; that yesterday and
its events are forgotten. I am as a new, a different being."
He could not hear the voice that whispered in her heart also, that
the dawn of a new day had cast its spell over them both.
"Oh, speak to me of my father," she cried, in anxious tones.
"Yes, I will; I will call reason to my aid. Your father is my
prisoner, and I have sworn that I would bring the rebels back to
submission, and honor requires that I should finish what I have
undertaken. I now deplore it in my inmost soul, now that the magic
of your eyes has transformed me, and made of the fierce combatant a
man who longs to fall at your feet, and pour out his heart's agony
and bliss. And yet I cannot undo what I have begun. I registered an
oath in the presence of the men of Praousta, and told them: --If you
do not on the morrow comply with what I have commanded, in the name
of the tschorbadji, I shall behead the prisoners that Allah has
delivered into my hands!'"
"O my father!" cried Masa, loudly, in tones of anguish.
"I cannot do otherwise," said Mohammed, heaving a deep sigh. "I have
pledged my honor that it should be so. I cannot recall my oath. But
I can die, and die I will; no other resource is left me.
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