ome well-wisher press upon her,
listening to praises of her beauty....

For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her
frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as
the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark
hair revealed its lovely wealth.

"Is she not a rose--will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard
that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared
on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal
youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated
master.

And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the
flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks
or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or
malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some
rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old
fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks,
bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons.

* * * * *

And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared,
yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the
feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out
from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often,
draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their
youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright,
deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor
women, keeping courage in twos and threes.

Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl
with whom Aimee had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with
yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the
bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already
consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at
her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women,
experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes
and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a
tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a
lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions....

"And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane--she
says she has never met him--"

A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She
was a pretty girl, with a curve o