*

Now I know.

I had observed that at the beginning of every meal she seemed to have
something on her mind, going toward the door, hesitating as if to see
whether I would follow, and then returning. At length yesterday, after
sitting to eat, she jumped up, and to my infinite surprise, said her
first word: said it with a most quaint, experimental effort of the
tongue, as a fledgling trying the air: the word '_Come_.'

That morning, meeting her in the court, I had told her to repeat some
words after me: but she had made no attempt, as if shy to break the long
silence of her life; and now I felt some sort of foolish pleasure in
hearing her utter that word, often no doubt heard from me: and after
hurriedly eating, I went with her, saying to myself: 'She must be about
to shew me the food to which she is accustomed: and perhaps that will
solve her origin.'

And so it has proved. I have now discovered that to the moment when she
saw me, she had tasted only her mother's milk, dates, and that white
wine of Ismidt which the Koran permits.

As it was getting dark, I lit and took with me the big red-silk lantern,
and we set out, she leading, and walking confoundedly fast, slackening
when I swore at her, and getting fast again: and she walks with a
certain levity, flightiness, and liberated _furore_, very hard to
describe, as though space were a luxury to be revelled in. By what
instinctive cleverness, or native vigour of memory, she found her way I
cannot tell, but she led me such a walk that night, miles, miles, till I
became furious, darkness having soon fallen with only a faint moon
obscured by cloud, and a drizzle which haunted the air, she without
light climbing and picking her thinly-slippered steps over mounds of
_debris_ and loosely-strewn masonry with unfailing agility, I
occasionally splashing a foot with horror into one of those little ponds
which always marked the Stamboul streets. When I was nearer her, I would
see her peer across and upward toward Pera, as if that were a remembered
land-mark, and would note the perpetual aspen oscillations of the long
coral drops in her ears, and the nimble ply of her limbs, wondering with
a groan if Pera was our goal.

Our goal was even beyond Pera. When we came to the Golden Horn, she
pointed to my caique which lay at the Old Seraglio steps, and over the
water we went, she lying quite at ease now, with her face at the level
of the water in the centre of the crescent-sha