Night filled the harem with shadows and scent. The silver lamps cast a soft glow through the huge hall, glinting on wide ottomans and piles of cushions, on little tables set with coffee and sherbet, sweets and fruit and cigarettes.
There were perhaps thirty women in the great room, but the majority of them were the attendants of the half-dozen girls lolling on couches and cushions around the splashing fountain.
Full length on a wide ottoman Leonora was stretched, her dark eyes fixed spitefully on an adjacent lounge where the Arab girl lay, her face hidden in the cushions, her golden form almost buried in her wealth of black hair.
"See, Rayma, it's night again," Leonora said, malice in her soft, drawling voice. "Night! And still our lord Casim has not come to visit you."
There was a sob from the other girl, but no reply.
"How you jeered at me, Rayma, when you stole his heart from me," Leonora went on. "But now it seems another has stolen his heart from you, since he no longer comes to see you. Another whom I shall welcome as a sister."
At the taunt Rayma sat up suddenly, with a wild gesture pushing the mass of black hair back from her face.
"For weeks and weeks he has not been here," she wailed. "Oh, my heart it breaks for love of him."
Leonora laughed, but an elderly woman sitting near laid a soothing hand on the distraught girl.
"Hush, Rayma, my pearl," she said. "Haven't I often told you our Sultan has had thoughts for nothing but vengeance of late?"