and well cared for—­from the magnificent black horses, ignorant of whip and spur, that filled his stables, and the dogs that lay peacefully about in his palace, to the beauties of the harem, who tripped about gaily singing and laughing in their cool halls and shaded garden.  Where the Turk rules there is usually peace, for his nature is pacific, and in the palace of Ahmed there was joy and peace and love and pleasure in abundance.  There were seven ladies of the harem, including Dilama, and six of these were happy wives of Ahmed.  Each had one or more sons, handsome, large-eyed, sedate little Mohammedans, who were being trained by Turkish mothers in all sorts of gentle ways and manners—­in thought and care for others, in courtesy and kindness; and who were very different in their childish work and play from the brawling, selfish, cruel little monsters that European children of the same age mostly are.  But Dilama was not yet Ahmed’s wife; she loved him most truly and deeply as an affectionate daughter.  For who could not love Ahmed?  There was a charm in his stately beauty of face and figure, in the kind musical voice, in the eyes so large and dark and gentle, that was irresistible.  But to Dilama he was something far above her:  her king, her lord indeed, for whom she would lay down life itself without question, but not the man to whom her ardent simple nature had turned for love.  Ahmed had not sought her.  When first she came to his palace she had been too young except for him to treat as a pretty child, and the relationship of father and daughter then established had never yet been broken in upon.  And the light-hearted, sunny-natured Druze girl had taken life just as she found it, regarding herself as Ahmed’s daughter, and rejoicing in her home of love and beauty she ceased to remember that one day he would inevitably claim her as his wife, and that that day must be the beginning or the end of happiness just as she prepared for it.  But she did not prepare for it, she ignored it:  flitting like some golden butterfly through the pleasant hours, and growing fairer every day, so that the harem women looked at her with a little sinking of the heart yet no ill-will, and said amongst themselves, “Surely Ahmed must choose her soon.”  But Ahmed loved at that time with his whole soul a Turkish woman, and she was to give him shortly a second child, and for fear of disturbing her peace of mind Ahmed remained in the Selamlik, and would not visit his other wives, nor send for Dilama, though his eyes, like the others, noted her growing beauty day by day.

“I will wait in patience,” he thought, looking out one morning at sunrise, and watching Dilama playing with the white doves on the basin edge of the fountain.  “I will wait till Buldoula is well and strong again.  She would fret now, and think I was forgetting her in a new love if I call Dilama to me yet.  I will wait till her second son is born, and then in her joy and pride she will not be jealous of the new wife.”