Night filled the harem with shadows and scent. The silver lamps cast a
soft glow through the huge hall, glinting on wide ottomans and piles of
cushions, on little tables set with coffee and sherbet, sweets and
fruit and cigarettes.
There were perhaps thirty women in the great room, but the majority of
them were the attendants of the half-dozen girls lolling on couches and
cushions around the splashing fountain.
Full length on a wide ottoman Leonora was stretched, her dark eyes
fixed spitefully on an adjacent lounge where the Arab girl lay, her
face hidden in the cushions, her golden form almost buried in her
wealth of black hair.
"See, Rayma, it's night again," Leonora said, malice in her soft,
drawling voice. "Night! And still our lord Casim has not come to
visit you."
There was a sob from the other girl, but no reply.
"How you jeered at me, Rayma, when you stole his heart from me,"
Leonora went on. "But now it seems another has stolen his heart from
you, since he no longer comes to see you. Another whom I shall welcome
as a sister."
At the taunt Rayma sat up suddenly, with a wild gesture pushing the
mass of black hair back from her face.
"For weeks and weeks he has not been here," she wailed. "Oh, my heart
it breaks for love of him."
Leonora laughed, but an elderly woman sitting near laid a soothing hand
on the distraught girl.
"Hush, Rayma, my pearl," she said. "Haven't I often told you our
Sultan has had thoughts for nothing but vengeance of late?"
"Would vengeance keep him away from me all these weeks? It's more than
vengeance. It's love. Love for some other girl."
Rayma clutched at the woman with slim, jewelled hands.
"Tell me, Sara, you come and go at will through the palace. Is there
one?"
"My pearl, if there was one, wouldn't she be here in the harem?" Sara
answered diplomatically.
"Yes, and so she would," Rayma replied more quietly. "And I could
measure my beauty against hers."
Then she started rocking herself to and fro, in an agony of grief.
"Did he but come, my love, my Lord Casim, his heart would be mine
again," she sobbed.
Then she stopped wailing suddenly, and faced the old woman anxiously.
"Sara, tell me quickly, have these weeks of weeping made me less
beautiful?"
However, she did not wait for any reply.
Her gaze went to the arches, where night looked in at her mockingly.
"Look. It is night," she cried. "And my heart is hungry for love.
For the love of my Lord Casim. For his arms. His kisses. Again it is
night. And he has not come."
Then through the vaulted room piercing shriek after piercing shriek
rang--the shrieks of a lovesick girl in the throes of hysteria.
As Sara sat patting Rayma's hands and trying to soothe her, she thought
of the milk-white maid with the wide blue eyes and the golden curls,
whom the Sultan himself had brought unconscious to his palace, and who
was lodged--as no other slave girl had ever been--in his own private
suite. And who treated her master--as no other slave had ever treated
him--as if she were his equal, even his superior, making him wait on
her. A task the Sultan seemed to find pleasure in!