Here the eyes of the father and the husband involuntarily filled with tears.

“Wherefore do you weep?  How silly of you!  Why, you know, of course, it is only a tale.  Listen now to how it goes on!  The robber carried the maiden he had stolen to Stambul.  He took her straight to the Kizlar-Aga whose office it is to purchase slave-girls for the harem of the Padishah.  The bargaining did not take long.  The Kizlar-Aga paid down at once the price which the slave-merchant demanded, and forthwith handed Irene over to the slave-women of the Seraglio, who immediately conducted her to a bath fragrant with perfumes.  Her face, her figure, her charms, amazed them exceedingly, and they lifted up their voices and praised her loudly.  But when Irene heard their praises she shuddered, and her heart died away within her.  Surely God never gave her beauty in order that she might be sacrificed to it?  At that moment she would have much preferred to have been born humpbacked, squinting, swarthy; she would have liked her face to be all seamed and scarred like half-frozen water, and her body all diseased so that everyone who saw her would shrink from her with disgust—­better that than the feeling which now made her shrink from the contemplation of herself.”

Then they put upon her a splendid robe, hung diamond ear-rings in her ears, tied a beautiful shawl round her loins, encircled her arms and feet with rings of gold, and so led her into the secret apartment where the damsels of the Padishah were all gathered together.  This, of course, was long, long ago.  Who can tell what Sultan was reigning then?  Why, even our fathers did not know his name.

“Pomp and splendour, flowers and curtains adorned the immense saloon, the ceiling whereof was inlaid with precious stones, while the floor was fashioned entirely of mother-o’-pearl—­he who set his foot thereon might fancy he was walking on rainbows.  Moreover, cunning artificers had wrought upon this mother-o’-pearl floor flowers and birds and other most wondrous fantastical figures, so that it was a joy to look thereon, for no carpet, however precious, was suffered to cover all this splendour.  Yet lest the cold surface of the pavement should chill the feet of the damsels, rows of tiny sandals stood ready there that they might bind them upon their feet and so walk from one end of the room to the other at their ease.  And these sandals they called kobkobs.”

“Aye, aye!” cried the anxious Janaki, “you describe the interior of the Seraglio so vividly that I almost feel frightened.  If a man listened long enough to such a tale he might easily get to feel as guilty as if he had actually cast an eye into the Sultan’s harem, and ’twere best for him to die rather than do that.”