in arabesques.

How much happier, thought Arlee, were these serving maids in the
freedom of their poverty than the cloistered aristocrats behind
their darkened windows. She wondered if that strange figure beside
her, half Moslem, half modern, envied the little maid the saucy jest
which she flung at a bare-footed boy idling beside a dozing white
donkey. As she watched the old-world quiet of the picture was
broken. Some one, the doorkeeper, she thought, from his vivid robes
and yellow shoes, came running across the court, shouting something
at the girl which sent her flying to the house, her jar forgotten,
and another man, an enormous Nubian with blue Turkish bloomers,
short red jacket and a red fez, hurried across the court toward the
_haremlik_.

The lady stepped toward the screening and called down; the man
stopped, raised his head, and shouted back a jargon of excited
gutturals, waving his arms in vehement gesturing. His mistress
interrupted with a brief question, then with another, then nodding
her head indifferently to herself, she called down an order,
apparently, and turned away.

"One of our servants is dead," she murmured to Arlee in explanation.
"They say now it is the plague."

"The plague?" repeated the girl absently. She was thinking what a
hideous creature that great Nubian was. Then, more vividly, "The
_plague_?"

"You have fear?" said the negligent voice.