Why wasn't he just like other men? Why had Fate been so unkind? Giving her love, but in such a form that pride revolted from taking it.
Then Pansy went to bed, to lie awake for some time, brooding on the miracle the day had brought forth and the black barrier that stood between her and her lover.
She was about early the next morning and wandering in the garden.
It was a long stretch of shady walks and sunken ponds and splashing fountains, full of tropical trees, scented shrubs, and rare blossoms—a tangle of delights. In one spot she found a tennis court, walled with pink roses. The grounds went on, ending in a wide, flagged terrace, with stone seats and shallow steps leading down to the blue waters of the lake.
High walls ran down either side of the spreading garden. Behind, a huge building rose in domes and turrets and terraces—the palace of El-Ammeh had Pansy but known it, of which her new quarters were but a further portion.
Blissfully ignorant of this fact, she turned her steps from the rippling lake and wandered along a flower-decked path that twisted under shady trees and creeper-grown arches, coming presently to a locked iron gate let into the massive walls.
It gave a view of a scorched paddock where a dozen or more horses were browsing.
Pansy paused and scanned the animals.
One was strangely familiar.
That gaunt chestnut browsing there could only be "The Sultan"!