He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to the water's edge between this part of the palace and the nest building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane.
Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, and clothes and speech were his only real concern.
He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to Aimée—if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her again, and be sure that she understood her own history—he had no notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance.
And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word—and with it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word.
And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration. He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion.
And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about in—the little more that tips the scale between safety and destruction.
But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess.
The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward regions of the place.
He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at least.
He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions. If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding.