CHAPTER XIII.
THE EMPTY PLACE.
Everything was now calm and quiet, and the world pursued its ordinary course; but far away among the Blue Mountains dwells a woman who knows nothing of all that is going on around her, and who every evening ascends the highest summit of the hills surrounding her little hut and gazes eagerly, longingly, in the direction of Stambul, following with her eyes the long zig-zag path which vanishes in the dim distance—will he come to-day whom she has so long awaited in vain?
Every evening she returns mournfully to her little dwelling, and whenever she sits down to supper she places opposite to her a platter and a mug—and so she waits for him who comes not. At night she lays Halil's pillow beside her, and puts their child between the pillow and herself that he may find it there when he comes.
And so day follows day.
One day there came a tapping at her window. With joy she leaps from her bed to open it.
It is not Halil but a pigeon—a carrier-pigeon bringing a letter.
Gül-Bejáze opens the letter and reads it through—and a second time she reads it through, and then she reads it through a third time, and then she begins to smile and whispers to herself:
"He will be here directly."
From henceforth a mild insanity takes possession of the woman's mind—a species of dumb monomania which is only observable when her fixed idea happens to be touched upon.