She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had seen so often on others’ lips, the smile of pride trying desperately to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious.  Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all, but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of some mortal hurt.

The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest.  The whispers of her young maids of honor, “Really, Aimee, he looks so young!  One would never surmise,” were more galling in their intended consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends’ own shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart of the uncaring, inquisitive, “How do you find him, my dear?  He has the reputation for conquest!”

They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their glances back at her, as if to ask, “And is this our revoltee?  Is this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?”

Some, the frankest, murmured, “But why did you not refuse?” and others attempted consolation with a light, “As well the first as the last—­since we must all come to it.”

Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, “Come—­courage—­it’s not so bad.  And what would you?  We are women, after all; we do not need so much for happiness.

“Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies?  For other races, perhaps—­but for you, take hold of life.  There are realities yet in it to bring you joy.”

It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their pressure of her hands.

And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of terror rose higher and higher in her soul.

Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night when she found the key was gone.

Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the breaking sobs of rebellion and despair—­and of a longing so deep and so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar.

Never again would she see him now....  Never would she know—­never would she know all.  She had refused his aid.  And he might believe her still aloof, incredulous....  It was finished—­forever and ever.