And then, as if she wished to clear away the gathering clouds from her thoughts, she passed her hand across her forehead and continued in a lower, softer voice:
"This night, when the muezzin calls the hour of midnight, be in front of the fortress-garden on thy fleetest horse. Thou wilt not have to wait long; there is a tiny door there which conceals a hidden staircase which leads from the fortress to the trenches. I will come thither and bring her with me."
Feriz involuntarily pressed the hand of the girl kneeling before him, and felt a burning pressure in his hand, and when he looked at the young face before him he saw the smile of a sublime rapture break forth upon her radiantly joyful features.
Azrael parted from Feriz an altogether transformed being, another heart was throbbing in her breast, another blood was flowing to her heart, earth and heaven had a different colour to her eyes. She believed that the youth would love her if she died for him, and that thought made her happy.
But Feriz summoned Gregory Biró, and having recompensed him, sent him back to his mistress with the message:
"Thy wish hath been accomplished."
So sure was he that Azrael would keep her word—if only she were alive to do so.
Hassan Pasha waited and waited for Azrael. If the odalisk was not with him he felt as helpless as a child who has strayed away from its nurse. In the days immediately following the lost battle, the shame attaching to him and his agonized fear for his life had quite confused his mind; and the drugs employed at that time, combined with restless nights, the prayers of the dervishes, the joys of the harem and opium, had completed the ruin of his nervous system. If he were left alone for an hour he immediately fainted, and when he awoke it was in panic terror—he gazed around him like one in the grip of a hideous nightmare. For some days he would leave off his opium, but as is generally the case when one too suddenly abandons one's favourite drug, the whole organism threatened to collapse, and the renunciation of the opium did even more mischief than its enjoyment.
When Azrael rejoined him he was asleep, the chain by which he held the Princess had fallen from his hand and when he awoke there was a good opportunity of persuading him that Mariska had escaped from him while he slept.