WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

by Frank Lin (pseud. of Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton)


Dedicated to Muriel Atherton




WHAT DREAMS MAY COME.

THE OVERTURE.


Constantinople; the month of August; the early days of the century. It
was the hour of the city's most perfect beauty. The sun was setting,
and flung a mellowing glow over the great golden domes and minarets
of the mosques, the bazaars glittering with trifles and precious with
elements of Oriental luxury, the tortuous thoroughfares with their
motley throng, the quiet streets with their latticed windows, and
their atmosphere heavy with silence and mystery, the palaces whose
cupolas and towers had watched over so many centuries of luxury and
intrigue, pleasure and crime, the pavilions, groves, gardens, kiosks
which swarmed with the luxuriance of tropical growth over the hills
and valleys of a city so vast and so beautiful that it tired the brain
and fatigued the senses. Scutari, purple and green and gold, blended
in the dying light into exquisite harmony of color; Stamboul gathered
deeper gloom under her overhanging balconies, behind which lay hidden
the loveliest of her women; and in the deserted gardens of the Old