At last the boy returned breathless, and the precious stuff was poured on her hair and hands.  Then she stood up radiant and the women sighed and smiled by turns as she went out, preceded by the old slave.  A long narrow passage, lighted overhead by swinging coloured lamps, divided the women’s from the men’s apartments, and through this they passed noiselessly over the matting-covered floor.  At the end fell heavy curtains, concealing the door and some steps.  Here the slave left the girl, and Dilama went through the curtains alone.  She mounted the steps and passed through the door.  All was quite silent here, and the passage unlighted, except that through a tiny window high up above her head a streak of moonlight fell across her way.  Dilama paused oppressed, she knew not by what feeling.  Only a short passage and another curtained door divided her now from Ahmed’s presence.  Her breath came fast, her pulses beat nervously, and her feet dragged; slowly and unwillingly she crept onward, harassed by cold, vague fears.  Before the door itself she trembled, and her soft hands and wrists hardly availed to push it open.  It yielded slowly, and fell to behind her in silence.

The room was full of light; a silver blaze of moonlight illumined it from end to end.  The great windows, over which usually the curtains were drawn, stood uncovered and wide open to the soft Damascus air.  The scent of roses and jessamine from the great man’s garden stole in with the silver light.  The girl paused when just over the threshold:  she was cold and frightened, and her body shook.  Ahmed did not move or speak.  He was sitting sideways to one great window, with his head resting against the high back of the one European chair that the room possessed.  The light was so strong that the rich, deep blue of the turban was distinctly visible in it, but his face was in shadow.  She could see, however, the noble throat and pose of the shoulders as he sat waiting.  The girl’s heart beat with a little sense of pleasure as she looked.  Her feet crept slowly a little farther into the room.  A great tide of pleasure was really just outside her heart, and would have rushed in and overwhelmed it in waves of joy had she but opened her heart’s doors to it; but the shadow of Murad was on the bolts and locks, and she felt afraid.  The silence and great silver light in the room oppressed her.  Ahmed had not heard her enter, and had not stirred nor looked at her.  She crept a little closer.  The beauty of the majestic figure called her irresistibly.  She drew closer.  She had passed one window now, and was near enough to see the jewels flash on the slender hand that hung over the chair-arm, and the glistening light on the embroidered Turkish slippers on his feet.  Shading her brow with one hand, Dilama came forward, fell at those feet and kissed them.  Still there was no movement, no sound.  This was so unlike Ahmed’s way of treating his slaves, that the girl, forgetting her fears, looked