Life, for the Frenchwoman, was a matter of paying for her husband’s illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send to a convent in France.

There was, at first, the hope of reunion, extinguished by each added year.  What could madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited, accomplish in France?  The mere getting there was impossible—­the little one required so much.  Her daughter was no dependent upon charity.  And in Cairo madame had a clientele, she commanded a price.  And so for the child’s sake she taught and saved, concentrating now upon a dot, and feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters arriving each week of the years, and the occasional photographs of an ever-growing, unknown young creature.

It was to madame’s care that Aimee had been given when the motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam’s ministrations, and for nearly nine years in the palace madame had maintained her courteous and tactful supervision.  Indeed, it was only this last year that madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, perceiving that Aimee would not longer require her.

“Excellent,” she said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. Hendricks, and in French to Aimee she added, with a hint of asperity, “Do give her a word.  She is trying to please you.”

“It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks,” said the girl dutifully, bringing her glance back from that far sky.

The little seamstress was instantly all vivacity.  “H’and now for the sash—­shall we ’ave it so—­or so?” she demanded, attaching the wisp of tulle experimentally.

“As you wish it....  It is very nice,” Aimee repeated vaguely.  She picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously across her fingers.  A dinner gown....  When she wore this she would be a wife....  The wife of Hamdi Bey....  A shiver went through her and she dropped the tulle swiftly.

In ten days more....

Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion.  Gone was her fear for her father and her tenderness to him.  Only this numb coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be accomplished....  Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that strange brief past.

There was a stir at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain.  Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a croon like a lullaby, “Beautiful as the dawn ... she will walk upon the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals ... she will dazzle him with the beams of her eyes and with the locks of her hair, she will bind him to her ... beautiful as the dawn....”

It was the marriage chant of Miriam’s native village, an old love song that had come down the wind of centuries.