morning under the wide-spreading plane-trees shading the
Fountain Beautiful--the Chesmegazell--attended by her faithful slave
Multif, her beautiful body stretched on a Damascus rug of priceless
value, her eager eyes searching the blue waters of the Bosphorus.

On this particular morning--my lady had just stepped into her boat--the
young man was seen to raise himself on his elbow, lift his eyelids, and
a slight flush suffused his swarthy cheeks. Then came an order in a low
voice, and the caique swerved in its course and headed for the dot of
white and gold in which sat Multif and my lady. The Spanish caballero
haunts the sidewalk and watches all day beneath his Dulcinea's balcony;
or he talks to her across the opera-house or bull-ring with cigarette,
fingers, and cane, she replying with studied movements of her fan. In
the empire of Mohammed, with a hundred eyes on watch--eyes of eunuchs,
spies, and parents--love-making is reduced to a passing glance, brief
as a flash of light, and sometimes as blinding.

That was all that took place when the two caiques passed--just a
thinning of the silken veil, with only one fold of the yashmak slipped
over the eyes, softening the fire of their beauty; then a quick,
all-enfolding, all-absorbing look, as if she would drink into her very
soul the man she loved, and the two tiny boats kept each on its way.

The second act of the comedy opens in a small cove, an indent of the
Bosphorus, out of sight of passing boat-patrols--out of sight, too, of
inquisitive wayfarers passing along the highroad from Beicos to
Danikeui. Above the cove, running from the very beach, sweeps a garden,
shaded by great trees and tangles of underbrush; one bunch smothering a
summer-house. This is connected by a sheltered path with the little
white house that nestles among the firs half-way up the steep brown
hill that overlooks the village of Beicos.

The water-patrol may have been friendly, or my lady's favorite slave
resourceful, but almost every night for weeks the first caique and the
second caique had lain side by side in the boat-house in the cove, both
empty, except for one trusty man who loved Mahmoud and who did his
bidding without murmur or question, no matter what the danger. Higher
up, her loose white robes splashed with the molten silver of the moon
filtering through overhanging leaves, where even the nightingale
stopped to listen, could be heard the cooing of two voices. Then would
come a warning