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The dress of all, both men and women, is strange and hideous, and one looks in vain for the well-folded turban, or the decent modest yashmak. "This odd people have horses, and very good ones, but seldom ride them; because for the most part they have machines like chariots, made with wheels and of many various shapes; and in these they sit, and cause the horses to draw them.
A man brazen enough to declare that he could hold us in suspense about the adventures of a broomstick, with the aid of a yashmak and an ankle, may know the world; you had better not know him that is my remark; and do not trust him.
"You are a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak. "Only in costume. I am an American." She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an American young man." She added, "I have met old ones yes, and middle-aged ones and the women but a young one, no." "A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. "You are French?" "That is for your imagination!"
The rapping was repeated; and peering again across the room, he very distinctly perceived a figure upon the balcony by the open window. It was that of a woman who wore the black silk dress and the white yashmak of the Moslem, and who was bending forward looking into the room. "Who is there?" he called. "What do you want?" "S sh!"
After a while we climbed above them, and looking down could see the clouds mottling all the landscape, and through holes little patches of sunlit field or wood peering through like the eyes of a Turkish woman through her yashmak. Our horses panted and sweated up the long and arduous slope for two mortal hours, up and ever up; but all things come to an end, and at last we reached the top.
In and out of the strangely attired groups darted his agile quarry, all but captured a score of times, but always eluding him. Sime he had hopelessly lost, as around fountain and flower-bed, arbour and palm trunk he leapt in pursuit of the elusive yashmak. Then, in a shadowed corner of the garden, he trapped her.
I hurried down therefore from my chamber just as I was, forgetting even in my excitement to throw my yashmak over me, and crossing the narrow yard between our houses, I entered the Emir's garden. "He met me in the midst of the garden, and in answer to my eager inquiry for my husband, he said: 'You cannot see him, it is too late; he is dead.
Very simple and harmless they looked too, the taller one in spotless galabeah and red fez, his smallpox pitted face softened by the light of the dying moon; the other, a mere bundle of clothes with the yashmak covering all except the eyes, dragging back from the hand which pulled her ruthlessly up to the door of a house conspicuous by its length of wall unbroken by windows.
But they were up at six in the morning, and the four boys went out to explore the city by themselves for a couple of hours. Even at this early hour the ladies, old and young, were in the balconies, and they were much occupied in observing the latter. Though the yashmak, or veil, was not often used to cover the face, it appeared to have been only thrown back upon the head.
The sweet air of the Bosphorus blew in his face, the distant lights twinkled and flashed past as the steam launch ran swiftly on, and Alexander dozed in his chair, dreaming that the scented breeze had blown aside the folds of the yashmak, and that he was gazing on the most beautiful face in the world. That is one of the characteristics of the true Russian.
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