ernal relationship to her? the
beginning of a new one? She dared not lift her eyes lest he should
see their terror; the blood burnt in the surface of all her fair
skin, as if red-hot irons were pressed to it. And Ahmed, gazing
upon her with the pure noonday light, softened by the leafy screen
without pouring over her, drank in her fair Syrian beauty with
delight. The pale, rose-hued silken clothing she wore harmonised
with the ivory and rose of her round arms and throat and cheeks,
and threw up the masses of dark hair that fell beneath her veil to
her slender waist. Ahmed very gently unbound the snowy garment from
her head and stroked her hair lightly, watching the gold gleams in
its ripples as his hand passed over them. He saw her dismay,
confusion, even her terror, and noticed the quiver of her hands and
the irregular leap of her bosom, but these did not dismay him. He
was accustomed to be beloved even as he loved, and the women of the
harem who came to him in fear left him with happy confidence. He
affected now not to see her embarrassment, thinking it to be only
that, and said quietly, "And you have been happy, Dilama, in my
house?" The girl felt she must speak, though her throat seemed
closed and her tongue nerveless.

"Very happy," she faltered at last in a whisper.

"But you have been lonely, perhaps?" he asked. "Have the roses and
doves in the garden been companions enough for you? Have you not
been too much alone?"

In the heavy load of apprehension of intangible fear and horror
that seemed stifling her, a madness of longing came over the girl
to be free from her guilty secret, to have never known Murad. Now
she could have looked up fearless, full of expectant joy! She could
have loved this man; she knew it, now that she felt his love
approaching her: hope was dying within her that ever again would he
regard her simply as his daughter. She knew those tones of the
voice, she had heard them from Murad in the garden, but here the
voice was infinitely more refined, the sound of it exquisitely
musical; and now, that love for her was in it, it told her a new
secret, that she could have given love for love. She knew, though
her eyelids were down, how beautiful the face was that bent over
her: the straight, severe lines of it, the magnificent eyes and
brows burnt through her lids. Ah, why had he waited so long, or she
not waited longer?

Full of intolerable, irrepressible pain, she looked up at last
suddenly.