The girl sat down beside him. She was quite close to him now.

But the worst of it was that, even now, Halil had not the remotest idea
what to say to her.

The maid was sad and apathetic, she did not weep as slave-girls are wont
to do. Halil would so much have liked the girl to talk and tell him her
history, and the cause of her melancholy, then perhaps it would have
been easier for him to talk too. He would then have been able to have
consoled her, and after consolation would have come love.

"Tell me, Gül-Bejáze!" said he, "how was it that the Sultan had you
offered for sale in the bazaar."

The girl looked at Halil with those large black eyes of hers. When she
raised her long black lashes it was as though he gazed into a night lit
up by two black suns, and thus she continued gazing at him for a long
time fixedly and sadly.

"That also you will learn to know, Halil," she murmured.

And Halil felt his heart grow hotter and hotter the nearer he drew to
this burning, kindling flame; his eyes flashed sparks at the sight of so
much beauty, he seized the girl's hand and pressed it to his lips. How
cold that hand was! All the more reason for warming it on his lips and
on his bosom; but, for all his caressing, the little hand remained cold,
as cold as the hand of a corpse.

Surely that throbbing breast, those provocative lips, are not as cold?