"Did I? Well, take your lira."
As the woman took the piece of money she added: "And don't forget that the odalisk said she had dreamed of you since she was a child, and that at sunset if you looked through the phials you would see her face."
"Nonsense, woman!"
"But try it, Sire, and maybe the noble Captain would send something to the beautiful odalisk?"
"Yes, when I see her in the phial I will send her myself as her slave."
The man thrust the silken case into the deep pocket of his flowing vest and went away.
Then began a struggle in Captain Ballaban. Since the capture of the fair girl by the altar of St. Sophia, he had been unable to efface the remembrance of her. She stood before him in his dreams: sometimes just falling beneath the dagger; sometimes in the splendor which he imagined to surround her in the harem; often in mute appeal to him to save her from the nameless horrors which her cry indicated that she dreaded. When waking, his mind was often distracted by thoughts of her. The presence of the Sultan lost its charm, for he had come to look upon him as her owner, and to feel himself in some way despoiled. He was losing his ambition for distant service, and found himself often loitering in the vicinity of the Phranza palace.
This feeling which, perhaps, is experienced by most men, at least once in life, as the spell of a fair face is thrown over them, was associated with a deeper and more serious one in Captain Ballaban.
From the day of her capture until now he had felt almost confident of her identity with his little playmate in the mountain home. She thus linked together his earliest and later life; and, as he thought of her, he thought of the contrast in himself then and now. The things he used to muse about when a child, his feelings then, his purposes, his religious faith, all came back to him, and with a strange strength and fascination. He began to realize that, though he was an enthusiast for both the Moslem belief and the service of the Ottoman, yet he had become such, not in his own free choice, but by the overpowering will of others. At heart he rebelled, while he could not say that he had come to disbelieve a word of the Koran, and was not willing to harbor a purpose against the sovereignty of the Padishah. Still he was compelled to confess to himself that, if the fair woman were indeed his old play-mate, and there was open a way by which he could release her from her captivity, he would risk so much of disloyalty to the Sultan as the attempt should require. Indeed, he argued to himself that, except in the mere form of it, it would not be disloyalty; for what did Mahomet care for one woman more or less in his harem? And was this woman not, after all, more his property than she was that of the Padishah? He had captured her; perhaps twice; and had saved her life in St. Sophia, for only his hand caught her dagger. She was his!
Then he became fond of indulging a day dream. The Sultan sometimes gave the odalisks to his favorite pashas and servants. What if this one should be given to him?