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CHAPTER XVI

CHAKENDÉ, THE SCORNED


It was dreary going away to Paris without my Lady of the Fountain, especially since I had made up my mind to have her with me; but it was a well-deserved punishment for attaching importance to the word of an elder.

The following two years were years of little to tell. They were filled with studies and books, and books and studies. Black clouds were already thickening on my young horizon, and I knew that sooner or later I should have to encounter the storm. I had a thousand and one projects for my life. Above all I wanted to become a doctor in order to minister to the Turkish women, who at the time would rather die than see a man doctor. I lived in that dream of wonderful usefulness which was to be mine, and which was to save me from the martyrdom of the women of my race.

The usual fate of a Greek girl, who has to sit and wait until a marriage is arranged for her, seemed to me the worst thing that could befall me. And if the fate of the Greek girl with