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Updated: May 13, 2025
"Is she not a rose will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated master.
What kind of a mythological being am I housing? Did she come at all out of Hamdi Effendi's harem? Is she not rather some strange sea-creature that clambered on board the vessel and bewitched the miserable boy, sucked the soul out of him, and drove him to destruction? Or is she a Vampire? Or a Succubus? Or a Hamadryad? Or a Salamander? One thing, I vow she is not human.
I looked long into her great innocent eyes. Yes, she was telling me the truth. She babbled on for a little. I gathered that her step-father, Hamdi Effendi, was a Turkish official. She had spent all her life in the harem from which she had eloped with this pretty young Englishman. "And what must I do?" she reiterated. I told her to give me time.
It was pleasanter to pretend that Hamdi was really only joking, in a shockingly exaggerated, practical way, and that presently, when the suitable time had elapsed, he would present himself, smiling, to end the ghastly, antiquated jest. For some time he continued to tell himself that. And then suddenly he told himself that the time for intervention had surely come. It was very hard to breathe.
And even queening over Hamdi and his palace must have offered little diversion to a wild dancing girl familiar with the excitement of more varied conquest. Ryder was horribly embarrassed. He was visited with a fearful constraint, a chivalrous wish not to hurt her feelings, and a sharp prevision of the danger of offending her. He took the first turn of least resistance.
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.
Now at the bottom of the stairs a shadowy figure of a sleeping eunuch was stretched. Hamdi Bey spoke sharply, giving a quick order.
Oh, everything in Alexandretta was stupid! Sometimes I think I have never seen Alexandretta or Ayesha or Hamdi. I think I always am with you." This must be so, as of late she has spoken little of her harem life; she talks chiefly of the small daily happenings, and already we have a store of common interests. The present is her whole existence; the past but a confused dream.
She was tense with fear for him, distrusting in every fiber the assurance of that fanatic, outraged Turk. She was not utterly resourceless. When Ryder's revolver had dropped to the floor she had maneuvered, unseen by Hamdi Bey, to get her train over it, and when she had stooped for her train her one free hand had closed over the revolver handle beneath the satin and lace.
Hamdi again exchanged a few sentences in Turkish with Carlotta, and then smiled upon us with the same unruffled suavity. "Au revoir, Mesdames et Messieurs." With a courteous salute he shuffled back towards the stall-entrance. The tension over, Carlotta broke from me and clutched Pasquale by the arm. "Oh, kill him, kill him, kill him!" she cried in a passionate whisper.
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