Page:Alien Souls by Achmed Abdullah (1922).djvu/157

care of everything for you, because of the respect, the friendship, the love, I bear you!"

And he walked softly out of the shop while Zado Krelekian looked at his hand, at the little white rash that had broken out where the crystal-tipped needle had pricked the skin.

"Leper!" he whispered under his breath. "Leper! Oh, my God!"

And it is thus that Zado Krelekian is cooped up in the back room of his house, with windows nailed down and curtains tightly closed both summer and winter, with fear stewing forever in his brain.

It is thus that Mohammed Yar, once a ragged, thin-mouthed, hook-nosed Kurd tribesman, dresses to-day in the height of fashion and lords it gloriously over Krelekian's Armenian clerks, spending Krelekian's money.

It is thus that, when the mood or the passion takes him, he crushes Aziza in his great, muscular arms and kisses her on the pouting, crimson lips.

Always he smiles when he kisses her. And always he gives thanks to Allah. Always he snaps his fingers derisively in the direction of the closed shutters behind which Zado Krelekian shivers.

Always when, as a good Moslem, he says his morning and evening prayers, he adds:.

"I am glad, O Allah, O All-Knowing One, that I kept my oath—that I did not take toll of Zado Krelekian, neither with steel nor bullet, neither with whip nor fist!"