A flowing robe of silver tissue was spread out over an ottoman in the centre of the floor. The slave girl at her side was holding up a long veil of shimmering silver, drawing it through her henna-stained finger-tips, with low, gurgling cries of delight; then, stretching out her arms wide, she spread the veil easily to their fullest extent. A moment later, drawing a tiny ring from her finger, she had pressed the veil as easily through the small golden circlet, so fine were the silken folds. Then with significant gestures she explained that all these treasures were for the stranger to wear instead of her own apparel. With scornful glances from her dark almond-shaped eyes she pointed disdainfully to Mary Fisher's own simple garments, which, at her entrance, she had tossed contemptuously into a heap on the floor.
The plain, grey, Quakeress's dress did indeed look simpler than ever amid all the shining Oriental splendour. Worn too it was, and travel-stained in places, though newly washed, carefully mended and all ready for use.
Mary Fisher had been a woman for many years before she became a Quakeress. Nay more, she was a woman still. It is possible that, for about the space of half a minute, she may have looked almost regretfully at the silver tissue draperies and the gauze veil.
Half a minute. Not longer! For her, a Messenger of the Great King, to clothe herself in garments worn by Turkish women, unbelievers, followers of the False Prophet, was impossible, not to be contemplated for an instant. With the gentleness of complete decision she dismissed the slave girl, who departed reluctantly towards the women's apartments. In spite of the froth of shining, billowy folds with which her arms were full, she turned round as she parted the striped, silken hangings of the doorway and drew her dusky orange finger-tips in a significant gesture across her slender brown throat. It was obvious that the slave girl considered this refusal a very serious breach of etiquette indeed!
Left alone, Mary Fisher clothed herself, proudly and yet humbly, in her own simple garments. Her body bore even yet the marks where cruel scourgings in her youth had furrowed deep scars from head to waist. Years ago thus had English Christians received her, when she and her companion had been whipped until the blood ran down their backs beneath the market cross at Cambridge. The two young girls were the first of any of the Friends to be thus publicly scourged. 'This is but the beginning of the sufferings of the people of God,' Mary had exclaimed prophetically, as the first stroke of the lash fell on her shoulders, while the assembled multitudes listened in amazement as the two suffering women went on to pray for mercy on their persecutors.
While here, in Adrianople, under the Crescent, the Infidel Turk, to whom she had come in the power of the very same Message for which she had suffered in Christian countries, was receiving her with kindness and respect, offering to clothe her body in sumptuous apparel, instead of with bloody scars....
Mary Fisher sighed with irrepressible pain at the thought. Looking down, the marks left by the stocks were also plainly visible under the sunburn round her ankles, as she stood, bare-footed, on the crimson rug. She gladly covered up those tell-tale tokens under her white stockings. But where were her shoes? They seemed to have disappeared. Although the few strips of worn leather that she had put off the night before had been scarcely worthy of the name of shoes, their disappearance might be a grave difficulty. Had they been taken away in order to force her to appear bare-footed before the Sultan?
Ah!—here the slave girl was reappearing. Kneeling down, with a triumphant smile she forced the Englishwoman's small, delicate feet—hardened, it is true, by many hundreds of miles of rough travelling, but shapely still—into a little pair of embroidered silver slippers. Turkish slippers! glistening with silver thread and crystal beads, turned up at the pointed toes, and finished by two silver tufted tassels, that peeped out incongruously from under the straight folds of the simple grey frock.
This time Mary Fisher yielded submissively and made not the slightest resistance. It did not matter to her in the least how her feet were shod, so long as they were shod in some way, and she was saved from having to pay a mark of homage to the Infidel. As she sat with folded hands on the divan, awaiting the summons of the Grand Vizier, her deep eyes showed that her thoughts were far, far away from any Silver Slippers.