“Leave her alone!” said Neforis who did not like to be interrupted in her jubilant effusiveness, and she shrugged her shoulders angrily.  “How she behaved herself again!  We have heard a great deal too much about charity, and though I do not want to boast of my own I am very ready to exercise it—­indeed, it is no more than my duty to show every kindness to a destitute relation of yours.  But this girl!  She tries me too far, and after all I am no more than human.  I can have no pleasure in her presence; if she comes into the room I feel as though misfortune had crossed the threshold.  Besides!—­You never see such things; but Orion thinks of her a great deal more than is good.  I only wish she had been safe out of the house!”

“Neforis!” her husband said in mild reproach; and he would have reproved her more sharply but that since he had become a slave to opium he had lost all power of asserting himself vigorously whether in small matters or great.

Ere long the Mukaukas had fallen into an uneasy sleep; but he opened his eyes more frequently than usual.  He missed the light footfall overhead to which he had been accustomed for these two years past; but she who was wont to pace the floor above half the night through had not gone to rest as he supposed.  After the events of the evening she had indeed retired to her room with tingling cheeks and burning eyes; but the slave-girls, who paid little attention to a guest who was no more than endured and looked on askance by their mistress, had neglected to open her window-shutters after sundown, as she had requested, and the room was oppressively sultry and airless.  The wooden shutters felt hot to the touch, so did the linen sheets over the wool mattrasses.  The water in her jug, and even the handkerchief she took up were warm.  To an Egyptian all this would have been a matter of course; but the native of Damascus had always passed the summer in her father’s country house on the heights of Lebanon, in cool and lucent shade, and the all-pervading heat of the past day had been to her intolerable.

Outside it was pleasant now; so without much reflection she pushed open the shutter, wrapped a long, dark-hued kerchief about her head and stole down the steep steps and out through a little side door into the court-yard.

There she drew a deep breath and spread out her arms longingly, as though she would fain fly far, far from thence; but then she dropped them again and looked about her.  It was not the want of fresh air alone that had brought her out; no, what she most craved for was to open her oppressed and rebellious heart to another; and here, in the servants’ quarters, there were two souls, one of which knew, understood and loved her, while the other was as devoted to her as a faithful dog, and did errands for her which were to be kept hidden from the governor’s house and its inhabitants.