ngular being! Where she has lived--and how--is a problem to which
not the faintest solution is conceivable. She had, I say, never seen
clothes: for when I began to dress her, her perplexity was unbounded;
also, during her twenty years, she has never seen almonds, figs, nuts,
liqueurs, chocolate, conserves, vegetables, sugar, oil, honey,
sweetmeats, orange-sherbet, mastic, salt, raki, tobacco, and many such
things: for she showed perplexity at all these, hesitation to eat them:
but she has known and tasted _white wine_: I could see that. Here, then,
is a mystery.

* * * * *

I have not gone to Imbros, but remained here some days longer observing
her.

I have allowed her to sit in a corner at meal-time, not far from where I
eat, and I have given her food.

She is wonderfully clever! I continually find that, after an incredibly
short time, she has most completely adapted herself to this or that.
Already she wears her outfit as coquettishly as though born to clothes.
Without at all seeming observant--for, on the contrary, she gives an
impression of great flightiness--she watches me, I am convinced, with
pretty exact observation. She knows precisely when I am speaking
roughly, bidding her go, bidding her come, tired of her, tolerant of
her, scorning her, cursing her. If I wish her to the devil, she quickly
divines it by my face, and will disappear. Yesterday I noticed
something queer about her, and soon discovered that she had been
staining her lids with black kohol, like the _hanums_, so that, having
found a box, she must have guessed its use from the pictures.
Wonderfully clever!--imitative as a mirror. Two mornings ago I found an
old mother-of-pearl kittur, and sitting under the arcade, touched the
strings, playing a simple air; I could just see her behind one of the
arch-pillars on the opposite side, and she was listening with apparent
eagerness, and, I fancied, panting. Well, returning from a walk beyond
the Phanar walls in the afternoon, I heard the same air coming out from
the house, for she was repeating it pretty faultlessly by ear.

Also, during the forenoon of the previous day, I came upon her--for
footsteps make no sound in this house--in the pacha's visitors'-hall:
and what was she doing?--copying the poses of three dancing-girls
frescoed there! So that she would seem to have a character as light as a
butterfly's, and is afraid of nothing.

* * * *