with my maids about the accident by which we were carried away, and
the happiness we should all enjoy at the end of our captivity."

"There were women in your Arab's fortress," said the Princess; "why
did you not make them your companions, enjoy their conversation,
and partake their diversions? In a place where they found business
or amusement, why should you alone sit corroded with idle
melancholy? or why could not you bear for a few months that
condition to which they were condemned for life?"

"The diversions of the women," answered Pekuah, "were only childish
play, by which the mind accustomed to stronger operations could not
be kept busy. I could do all which they delighted in doing by
powers merely sensitive, while my intellectual faculties were flown
to Cairo. They ran from room to room, as a bird hops from wire to
wire in his cage. They danced for the sake of motion, as lambs
frisk in a meadow. One sometimes pretended to be hurt that the
rest might be alarmed, or hid herself that another might seek her.
Part of their time passed in watching the progress of light bodies
that floated on the river, and part in marking the various forms
into which clouds broke in the sky.

"Their business was only needlework, in which I and my maids
sometimes helped them; but you know that the mind will easily
straggle from the fingers, nor will you suspect that captivity and
absence from Nekayah could receive solace from silken flowers.

"Nor was much satisfaction to be hoped from their conversation:
for of what could they be expected to talk? They had seen nothing,
for they had lived from early youth in that narrow spot: of what