“Not like Wardah or Fatûmah, if you please!” was the superb rejoinder. “They or their fathers were captured in a warlike raid and made to islam, I, God be praised, was born in the Faith. Look!” she cried, and with a splendid gesture bared her bosom. “This is the paste of which they make sultanas. My parents sold me—they were poor—that I might come to honour, as others of the family have done before me.”
“But what chance have you here? Do you expect to captivate the Pasha?”
“God forbid! I never even see him. Here I serve the sweetest of all ladies, who will one day find me a rich husband. It is a famed harîm, and my lady is renowned for goodness and refinement. The greatest in the land would not disdain a fair Circassian girl of her instructing.”
“But do you never miss your freedom? You can form no projects, being, it seems, entirely in the hands of others. Surely your thoughts are not so ruly? You must sometimes dream?”
Gulbeyzah fixed her great eyes on the questioner as though debating whether she were to be trusted. Then, with a smile, she grasped her hand and whispered, “Come!”
She led the English girl across the court where grew the orange trees, down a foul-smelling passage towards the kitchens, and up a flight of stairs into a corridor which served the chambers of the humblest servants. In its wall was a recess with a small window neither barred nor latticed. Here Gulbeyzah stopped.
The reason why that window had been left uncaged was plain, since it looked out upon blind walls and distant housetops. But one small angle of a terraced roof appeared within clear seeing range, and on that angle sat a man. When Gulbeyzah leaned her elbows on the window-sill, he sprang to his feet and made despairing gestures. She watched his antics for a moment, then drew in her head.
“It is a secret, mind!” she cautioned Barakah. “I spent an afternoon here once, when I was sulky, and he was walking on that roof by chance. Ever since then I see him every day. He always sits there. I sign to him to climb up, but I know he cannot.” She laughed scornfully. “I make romances in my mind about him. It is evident he dies of love. He has grown thinner.”
“How cruel! How can you torment him so?”
“He is a man, you understand. One does not feel compassion as one would for girls. Perhaps if he could climb up here I should reward him, but, thanks to God, he cannot, poor young man!”