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"Send Soutouma to me," and without taking any further notice of Dilama, Ahmed turned back towards the divan, threw himself upon it, and drew the pipe-stand towards him.
"I will wait in patience," he thought, looking out one morning at sunrise, and watching Dilama playing with the white doves on the basin edge of the fountain. "I will wait till Buldoula is well and strong again. She would fret now, and think I was forgetting her in a new love if I call Dilama to me yet.
Dilama shook from head to foot; in one fierce, sweeping rush, love passed over and through her as she stood staring with wild dilated eyes on the form before her.
Ahmed rose, a fire of joy leaping up suddenly within him. "It is well," he said, in an even tone. "Let the Lady Dilama come to me, and for yourself take this," and he dropped beside the crouching heap of black back and shoulder a small velvet bag. The slave grabbed it and put it in her breast, muttering a thousand thanks and blessings, and withdrew.
But Ahmed loved at that time with his whole soul a Turkish woman, and she was to give him shortly a second child, and for fear of disturbing her peace of mind Ahmed remained in the Selamlik, and would not visit his other wives, nor send for Dilama, though his eyes, like the others, noted her growing beauty day by day.
Dilama ventured to lift her eyes to the kingly figure before her, and meeting the pained, dark eyes bent on her, and realising that there was nothing, indeed, to make her fear but her own guilty conscience, she burst suddenly into an uncontrollable passion of weeping, and slipping from the couch fell sobbing at his feet.
Is it not better than the ground to which you were crying just now? Surely you will reward me well to-morrow?" Dilama answered nothing. Long shivers were passing through her. It was decided, then; she could no longer avoid her fate, and already with that thought the Oriental calm of acceptance came to her. Besides, where was Murad? She could not tell.
One evening, when the soft sky was a clear crimson and the full moon rose a perfect disk of transparent silver, faint as yet in the blood-red glow, Dilama felt as if she could exist no longer in the still, even, unchanging peace of the women's apartments.
In the languor of love that knows no fear and has no cares, that opiate of the soul, Dilama lay in his arms and sought his lips and eyes, and asked no more about caravans and journeys and mountains, drugged and heavy with love. In an hour when all was velvet blackness beneath the wall, they kissed farewell.
Where the Turk rules there is usually peace, for his nature is pacific, and in the palace of Ahmed there was joy and peace and love and pleasure in abundance. There were seven ladies of the harem, including Dilama, and six of these were happy wives of Ahmed.
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