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Updated: June 28, 2025
Dilama, who had hurriedly gathered herself up at the slave's entry, shrank away now into a corner of the room, white as death. "Has he sent for me?" she asked breathlessly. "Commanded me? Oh, must I go?" The slave looked at her strangely. She had no suspicion of Dilama's secret, and had no idea that her own misrepresentations were as gross as they were.
Dilama in her lighted chamber, with her fresh young eyes a little painted beneath their lids, and heavy gold chains about her soft young throat, sat looking into the little French mirror of cheap glass and gilt, and waiting for the attar of rose to be poured on her shining hair. At last the boy returned breathless, and the precious stuff was poured on her hair and hands.
At his feet she sank to her knees, and would have put her forehead to the ground, but Ahmed bent forward, and clasping both her arms lifted her on to the couch beside him. "And you are the Druze child, Dilama?" he said gently, and leaning a little back from her, surveyed her intently with dark lustrous eyes. The girl felt swooning with terror; before his gaze her very flesh seemed dissolving.
He turned at the interruption, but his face lighted up with pleasure as he recognised the women's attendant, and he signed to her to approach. "The Lady Dilama is weeping in her chamber, desiring my lord," announced the slave, with much bowing and prostration, but still with that confidence which showed she knew how welcome the news would be to her august listener.
"I come from your village in the hills, where you were taken from long ago. I am a Druze," and he threw his head higher, as the stag of the forest throws his at the first note of the challenge. Dilama knew well that he was of her own people. Infant memories, instinctive, implanted consciousness told her this without the aid of Druze clothing, or the short, gay dagger thrust into his waist-sash.
But Dilama was not yet Ahmed's wife; she loved him most truly and deeply as an affectionate daughter. For who could not love Ahmed? There was a charm in his stately beauty of face and figure, in the kind musical voice, in the eyes so large and dark and gentle, that was irresistible.
A lithe figure balanced a moment on the ledge of the open window, then leapt with the silent elastic bound of a cat into the room. Dilama sprang from the floor to her knees with a smothered cry of terror. "Murad! why have you come here?" The Druze leant over her and caught her arm fiercely. "To claim my own.
She had passed one window now, and was near enough to see the jewels flash on the slender hand that hung over the chair-arm, and the glistening light on the embroidered Turkish slippers on his feet. Shading her brow with one hand, Dilama came forward, fell at those feet and kissed them. Still there was no movement, no sound.
Dilama was led into the large general room, and there bathed from head to foot with warm rose-water; while the others sat round and chatted together, and admired her ivory skin, with the wild rose Syrian bloom upon it, and her masses of gold-tinted chestnut hair.
And the black slave bathed and anointed and dressed her with the utmost care and great self-importance, and sent the underslaves flying in all directions, one to gather syringa, and other heavy-scented blossoms from the garden, and another to fetch the jewels for her neck; and as the attar of rose bottle was found to be empty, a slave was sent with flying feet to the bazaar to purchase more; and Dilama, excited and elated, surrounded by jest and laughter and smiling faces, felt her youth leap up within her, and rejoice at coming into its kingdom love.
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