The second act of the comedy opens in a small cove, an indent of the Bosphorus, out of sight of passing boat-patrols—­out of sight, too, of inquisitive wayfarers passing along the highroad from Beicos to Danikeui.  Above the cove, running from the very beach, sweeps a garden, shaded by great trees and tangles of underbrush; one bunch smothering a summer-house.  This is connected by a sheltered path with the little white house that nestles among the firs half-way up the steep brown hill that overlooks the village of Beicos.

The water-patrol may have been friendly, or my lady’s favorite slave resourceful, but almost every night for weeks the first caique and the second caique had lain side by side in the boat-house in the cove, both empty, except for one trusty man who loved Mahmoud and who did his bidding without murmur or question, no matter what the danger.  Higher up, her loose white robes splashed with the molten silver of the moon filtering through overhanging leaves, where even the nightingale stopped to listen, could be heard the cooing of two voices.  Then would come a warning cry, and a figure closely veiled would speed up the path.  Next could be heard the splash of oars of the first caique homeward bound.

Locksmiths are bunglers in the East compared to patrols and eunuchs.  Lovers may smile, but they never laugh at them.  There is always a day of reckoning.  A whisper goes around; some disgruntled servant shakes his head; and an old fellow with baggy trousers and fez, says:  “My daughter, I am surprised” or “pained” or “outraged,” or whatever he does say in polite Turkish, Arabic, or Greek, and my lady is locked up on bread and water, or fig-paste, or Turkish Delight, and all is over.  Sometimes the young Lothario is ordered back to his regiment, or sent to Van or Trebizond or Egypt for the good of his morals, or his health or the community in which he lives.  Sometimes everybody accepts the situation and the banns are called and they live happy ever after.

What complicated this situation was that the girl, although as beautiful as a dream—­any number of dreams, for that matter, and all of paradise—­was a plebeian and the young man of royal blood.  Furthermore, any number of parents, her own two and twice as many uncles and aunts, might get together and give, not only their blessing, but lands and palaces—­ two on the Bosphorus, one in Bagdad and another at Smyrna, and nothing would avail unless his Imperial Highness the Sultan gave his consent.  Futhermore, again, should it come to the ears of his August Presence that any such scandalous alliance was in contemplation, several yards of additional bow-strings would be purchased and the whole coterie experience a choking sensation which would last them the balance of their lives.

Thus it was that, after that most blissful night in the arbor—­their last—­in which she had clung to him as if knowing he was about to slip forever from her arms, both caiques were laid up for the season; the first tight locked and guarded in the palace of the young man’s father, five miles along the blue Bosphorus as the bird flies, and the second in the little boat-house in the small indent of a cove under the garden holding the beloved arbor, the little white house, and My Lady of the diaphanous veil and the all-absorbing eyes.