Sitanthy shook her head. “Oh, yes, she will; for her ailment is incurable. Her heart is buried in a grave.”
In vain I begged for more explanations. With maddening precision Sitanthy reiterated the same words. She had heard her grandmother say this, and being a child of her race she accepted it as final. Her mind received without stimulating her imagination. But I was a Greek child, with a mind as alert, an imagination as fertile as hers were placid and apathetic.
The halaïc became the heroine of my daydreams. There was not a tale which my brain remembered or concocted in which she did not figure. My soul thirsted for knowledge of her affairs. They beckoned to me as forcibly as had the tumble-down wall, and I meant some day to penetrate her secrets.
She had said that the old hanoum had brought her up, and that the old hanoum was very poor. That was one more reason why she should have been given a great marriage. Any rich Turk would have been willing to pay a fortune for such as she. In the East, we talk of these things openly, as common occurrences; and since my intimacy with Djimlah I had unconsciously learned a great deal about Turkish customs.
The affairs of the halaïc quite absorbed me. I watched her carefully. She never looked sad, or even tired. She performed her menial duties as if they were pleasant tasks, like arranging flowers in vases. She did everything, from being the donkey of the well to beating the rugs, washing the linen, and scrubbing the floors.
In the early fall, toward sunset one day, I met her for the first time outside the garden wall. I was being taken home to supper, and she was mounting a hill leading to the forest of Belgrade. She passed me without seeing me, her eyes on the horizon, a mysterious smile on her lips.
My heart leaped at the radiance of her appearance. She was like the embodiment of all the Greek heroines of myth and history. The wondrous expression on her face so moved me that I had to sit down to keep my heart from leaping from my breast.
“Come now, mademoiselle,” said the elder who was with me, “you know you are already late for your supper.”
On any other occasion I should have kicked my governess, but the face of the halaïc had sobered me. Obediently I walked home, but I did not eat much supper.
The next time I saw Sitanthy, I told her of my meeting with the halaïc.