as he supposed. After the events of the evening she had indeed retired
to her room with tingling cheeks and burning eyes; but the slave-girls,
who paid little attention to a guest who was no more than endured and
looked on askance by their mistress, had neglected to open her window-
shutters after sundown, as she had requested, and the room was
oppressively sultry and airless. The wooden shutters felt hot to the
touch, so did the linen sheets over the wool mattrasses. The water in
her jug, and even the handkerchief she took up were warm. To an Egyptian
all this would have been a matter of course; but the native of Damascus
had always passed the summer in her father's country house on the heights
of Lebanon, in cool and lucent shade, and the all-pervading heat of the
past day had been to her intolerable.

Outside it was pleasant now; so without much reflection she pushed open
the shutter, wrapped a long, dark-hued kerchief about her head and stole
down the steep steps and out through a little side door into the court-
yard.

There she drew a deep breath and spread out her arms longingly, as though
she would fain fly far, far from thence; but then she dropped them again
and looked about her. It was not the want of fresh air alone that had
brought her out; no, what she most craved for was to open her oppressed
and rebellious heart to another; and here, in the servants' quarters,
there were two souls, one of which knew, understood and loved her, while
the other was as devoted to her as a faithful dog, and did errands for
her which were to be kept hidden from the governor's house and its
inhabitants.

The first was her nurse who had accompanied her to Egypt; the other was a
freed slave, her father's head groom, who had escorted the women with his