All day long she lay, broken and suffering, on one of the ottomans, and dark-faced women fawned upon her, saying words she could not understand; women who looked at her queerly, jealously, and talked about her among themselves.
A strange girl, this new fancy of the Sultan's! Who wanted none of the things he piled upon her—not even his love. A girl who looked as though life were a mirage; as if she moved in bad dreams,—a listless girl, beautiful beyond any yet seen in the harem, who seemed to have neither idea nor appreciation of the honour that was hers; who lay all day in silence, her only language tears. Tears that even the Sultan could not charm away.
In fact they seemed to fall more quickly and hopelessly when he came to see her.
Yet he did everything that mortal man could do to comfort her.
Jewels were showered upon her; jewels she refused to wear, to look at even; casting them from her with weak, angry hands, when her women would have decked her with them for her master's coming.
And never before were so many musicians, singers, dancers, and conjurors sent to the women's apartments. Hardly a day passed without bringing some such form of diversion; or merchants with rare silks, perfumes and ostrich feathers. The harem had never had such a perpetual round of amusements.
All for this new slave-girl. And she refused to be either amused or interested. She would look neither at the goods nor the entertainers. She just stayed with her face turned towards the wall and wept.
One day when the Sultan came to the harem to visit his new favourite, some of the older women drew him aside and whispered with him.
They suspected they had found a reason for the girl's strange behaviour.
Their words sent the Sultan from the big hall of the harem to the gilded chamber set aside for Annette, with hope in his savage heart, and left him looking down at her with a touch of tenderness on his cruel face.