rn to Imbros.

* * * * *

It seems certain that she never wore, saw, nor knew of, clothes.

I have dressed her, first sousing her thoroughly with sponge and soap
in luke-warm rose-water in the silver cistern of the harem-bath, which
is a circular marbled apartment with a fountain and the complicated
ceilings of these houses, and frescoes, and gilt texts of the Koran on
the walls, and pale rose-silk hangings. On the divan I had heaped a
number of selected garments, and having shewed her how to towel herself,
I made her step into a pair of the trousers called _shintiyan_ made of
yellow-striped white-silk; this, by a running string, I tied loosely
round the upper part of her hips; then, drawing up the bottoms to her
knees, tied them there, so that their voluminous baggy folds,
overhanging still to the ankles, have rather the look of a skirt; over
this I put upon her a blue-striped chiffon chemise, or quamis, reaching
a little below the hips; I then put on a short jacket or vest of scarlet
satin, thickly embroidered in gold and precious stones, reaching
somewhat below the waist, and pretty tight-fitting; and, making her lie
on the couch, I put upon her little feet little yellow baboosh-slippers,
then anklets, on her fingers rings, round her neck a necklace of
sequins, finally dyeing her nails, which I cut, with henna. There
remained her head, but with this I would have nothing to do, only
pointing to the tarboosh which I had brought, to a square kerchief, to
some corals, and to the fresco of a woman on the wall, which, if she
chose, she might copy. Lastly, I pierced her ears with the silver
needles which they used here: and after two hours of it left her.

About an hour afterwards I saw her in the arcade round the court, and,
to my great surprise, she had a perfect plait down her back, and over
her head and brows a green-silk feredjeh, or hood, precisely as in the
picture.

* * * * *

Here is a question, the answer to which would be interesting to me:
Whether or not for twenty years--or say rather twenty centuries, twenty
eternal aeons--I have been stark mad, a raving maniac; and whether or
not I am now suddenly sane, sitting here writing in my right mind, my
whole mood and tone changed, or rapidly changing? And whether such
change can be due to the presence of only one other being in the world
with me?

* * * * *

This si