eyes on watch--eyes of eunuchs, spies, and parents--
love-making is reduced to a passing glance, brief as
a flash of light, and sometimes as blinding.

That was all that took place when the two caiques
passed--just a thinning of the silken veil, with only
one fold of the yashmak slipped over the eyes, softening
the fire of their beauty; then a quick, all-enfolding,
all-absorbing look, as if she would drink into her
very soul the man she loved, and the two tiny boats
kept each on its way.

The second act of the comedy opens in a small
cove, an indent of the Bosphorus, out of sight of
passing boat-patrols--out of sight, too, of inquisitive
wayfarers passing along the highroad from
Beicos to Danikeui. Above the cove, running from
the very beach, sweeps a garden, shaded by great
trees and tangles of underbrush; one bunch smothering
a summer-house. This is connected by a sheltered
path with the little white house that nestles among
the firs half-way up the steep brown hill that overlooks
the village of Beicos.

The water-patrol may have been friendly, or my
lady's favorite slave resourceful, but almost every
night for weeks the first caique and the second
caique had lain side by side in the boat-house in the
cove, both empty, except for one trusty man who
loved Mahmoud and who did his bidding without