"When Ayesha, with the help of the eunuch, got over her faintness, she went to the window and looked down, but she could only see the darkness of the chasm below. She listened; she heard nothing but the wind, the rustling of the leaves, and now and then the screech of some night-bird. She pulled up the ladder; she saw that it had been cut in several places, at one of which it snapped. She understood that some foul treachery had been committed, but she could not make out who had discovered their secret and had dealt her this cruel wrong. She could not suspect the eunuch, who was there by her side, her friend to the last.
"She passed a night of most terrible anguish and anxiety, waiting impatiently, and still dreading the morrow. She tried to hope that Hussein might not have fallen down the chasm, that he might have been caught by some of the trees or bushes that grew on the rocks, and thus saved from death; but it was, at best, only a faint kind of forlorn hope.
"Not a cry, not a groan escaped from her lips, as she stood cold and tearless, at her window, almost stupefied by the intensity of her grief. Thus she remained motionless and dumb for hours, until the first rays of dawn lighted the tops of the Veli-Berdo, the mountain over the fortress.
"Her eyes pierced the faint glimmering of the dawn, and, looking down into the chasm, at the place where the two torrents meet, there she saw three lovely maidens of superhuman beauty, tending the remains of her lover. By their garments, of the colour and splendour of emeralds, by their faces shining like burnished silver, she knew that they were celestial houris, and that her lover was already amongst the blessed.
"When she saw this sight, she wanted to dash herself down into the chasm and rejoin her happy lover, hoping that Allah would be merciful and allow her to meet Hussein in the abode of the blessed; but then one of the houris beckoned to her to stop, and in a twinkling she was by her side, whispering words of comfort in her ear.
"Her attendants, whom she had dismissed in the early evening, came back to her early in the morning, and they were surprised to see she had fainted by the window.
"When she recovered from her swoon, every recollection of that terrible night seemed to have passed away; far from being bereaved and forlorn, she was a happy maiden, about to be united to her lover in eternal bliss.
"Later on in the day her father summoned her to his presence, to tell her that the Dizdar of Stermizza had brought the three hundred Christian heads demanded as the price for her hand, and that she was to get ready to receive him as the man who was to be her husband.
"Ayesha crossed her hands on her breast and bowed; then she uttered, in a soft, slow voice, that sounded as an echo of a distant sound:
"'My lord, it shall be as Kismet has ordained.'