Before I stretched my hand, she was presenting the board—­so that she had guessed something of my meaning!  But some hard tone in my talk had wounded her, for she presented it looking very glum, her under-lip pushing a little obliquely out, very pathetically, I must say, as always when she is just ready to cry.

In a few strokes I drew the palace, and herself standing at the portal between the pillars:  and now great was her satisfaction, for she pointed to the sketched figure, and to herself, interrogatively:  and when I nodded ‘yes,’ she went cooing her fond murmurous laugh, with pressed and mincing lips:  and it is clear that, in spite of my beatings, she is in no way afraid of me.

Before I could move away, I felt some rain-drops, and down in some seconds rushed a shower.  I looked, saw that the sky was rapidly darkening, and ran into the nearest of the little cubical houses, leaving her glancing sideways upward, with the quaintest artlessness of interest in the downpour:  for she is not yet quite familiarised with the operations of nature, and seems to regard them with a certain amiable inquisitive seriousness, as though they were living beings, comrades as good as herself.  She presently joined me, but even then stretched her hand out to feel the drops.

Now there came a thunder-clap, the wind was rising, and rain spattering about me:  for the panes of these houses, made, I believe, of paper saturated in almond-oil, have long disappeared, and rains, penetrating by roof and rare window, splash the bones of men.  I gathered up my skirts to run toward other shelter, but she was before me, saying in her strange experimental voice that word of hers:  “Come.”

She ran in advance, and I, with the outer robe over my head, followed, urging flinching way against the whipped rain-wash.  She took the way by the stone horse-pond, through an alley to the left between two blind walls, then down a steep path through wood to the rock-steps, and up we ran, and along the hill, to her yali, which is a mile nearer the village than the palace, though by the time we pelted into its dry shelter we were wet to the skin.

Sudden darkness had come, but she quickly found some matches, lit one, looking at it with a certain meditative air, and applied it to a candle and to a bronze Western lamp on the table, which I had taught her to oil and light.  Near a Western fire-place was a Turkish mangal, like one which she had seen me light to warm bath-waters in Constantinople, and when I pointed to it, she ran to the kitchen, returned with some chopped wood, and very cleverly lit it.  And there for several hours I sat that night, reading (the first time for many years):  it was a book by the poet Milton, found in a glazed book-case on the other side of the fire-place:  and most strange, most novel, I found those august words about warring angels that night, while the storm raved:  for this man had evidently taken no end of pains with his book, and done it gallantly well, too, making the thing hum:  and I could not conceive why he should have been at that trouble—­unless it were for the same reason that I built the palace, because some spark bites a man, and he would be like—­but that is all vanity, and delusion.