"One of the women told me. He is her brother. I've spent days in trying to help you get away."
"Oh, Rayma, I can never thank you enough," Pansy said, hysterically grateful.
The Arab girl cast a spiteful glance at her, wondering why the other could not guess that it was her, Rayma's, one desire to get rid of her rival.
"Each night after dark you must open your door," the Arab girl went on. "There will come a night when only one of the guards will be here. Then, if you bribe him enough, he will let you pass."
Rayma did not imagine that Pansy would escape. She expected and hoped that she would be caught in the attempt. Judging by her desert standards, death would be the portion of any slave-girl who dared attempt to fly from her owner.
After that, every night when she was alone, Pansy opened the sandalwood door leading into the long, dark passage by which she had first entered the palace.
Then, one evening, she found only one of the jewelled guards there.
On seeing this, she closed the door again, and going to her jewel case got out the one big diamond.
From the gallery of her sumptuous prison she had gathered that beyond the rose garden lay the grounds of the Sultan's own quarters, where she had spent those three days prior to his unveiling. During that brief time she had noticed that, at night and during the heat of the day, the horses that browsed in the sun-scorched paddock were stabled in a long, low building at the far end of the scanty field. And she knew, too, that the iron gates by which she had entered the palace could not lie so very far away from the paddock.
With trembling hands and almost sick with anxiety and excitement, Pansy opened the door of her prison. She said nothing to the guard there. She merely held the gem towards him.