The Fortieth Door

a's harem every

hour when the wedding cortège would bear the bride

surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones o

Her nearer friends were hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little Turks in rose robes, we

to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, her head a-t

nounced with satisfaction, "H'as pretty as

ing satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death and a

ping us attending," came Madame d

orange wreath of Western convention, must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed

r eyes drowsy with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She extolled her husband, a young captain of

l wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour;

beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy

r! Wishing her happiness-as if happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling, flutt

she could brush this confusion from her senses and from her heart its dumb terrors.

door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that train of three yards len

ng for the ceremonial farewell, in which the father r

a look of such strange, breathless, questioning intensity that it was like something palpable...

it only a father's semblance, and did there lie in the background of those petted, childish y

o his olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his

e last cord of their relati

sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a maid of spirit to a conqueror, a b

ss in those proud eyes and a

She knew it, and y

smile Tewfick faltered in his paterna

then a hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into

ate, huge negroes held up silken walls of damask, and between those walls she walked into the

tion of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open

ery of this marriage-Aimée, no longer the daughter of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimée Delc

had given herself for the safety of that man who had spent such careless indulgenc

e the relatives and guests and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the wide Shubra Aven

of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came glimpses of farm lands,

the coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride before the house of his parents-and made a zigzag way towa

ghts flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and

e, repellent Ethiopian was standing before an open

" murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with

ne, ignored the di

ancient beauty, I am told,

ted streets. And then a mad vision of herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And a

that sympathy betray her to rashness. She never would believe that in serving Aimée she would not be ruining her; and even if assured of Aimée's safety, s

. In one moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, an

broken, marble fountain flung up waters into which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepp

ance in the dark palace walls before them. Behind them th

ward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard. Aimée had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure with a waspish waist

lightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not a

ety, and he smiled-a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its in

and then he offered his arm and conducted her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its s

hated this man and that he ins

e ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a

f the reception while he withdrew to his own entertainment at her father's house.

ow and unveiled, sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had never before faced and never

d, winged creature, helpless for flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often sh

trying desperately to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious. Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic,

er surmise," were more galling in their intended consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own shrinking from that arrog

ient drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their g

e?" and others attempted consolation with a light, "As w

omantic, affectionate, tried to infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, "Come-courag

hting in your beauty alone, what are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For ot

ir voices, their intonations,

ning unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the

ear, never since the black night

her pillow to stifle the breaking sobs of rebellion and despair-and of a longing so deep and so terrible th

would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe

been the key. And now there was no key and no escape an

gle when the prison gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never again the sight of that too-

emptuous pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her

man. Now this wild dislik

adan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be forever at his mercy in this solitar

ht wildly

e kiss of a friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wish

ood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as the jewels in her diade

's say to a companion, and the two stared on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshn

n their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some rotund matron grave and serene, her head

, unknown women, slipping out from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often, draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their youth;

t were the hand of one half-dead, already consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women, experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and

met your husband? Listen, Jane-

a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her smart straw,

he had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her delight at having

let us come ... I wish you

gure, in black tcharchaf and

ck veil she saw the hazel eyes, bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader in