“Feriz! Thou wert wont to reward those damsels who sacrificed themselves for thee, who died nobly and valiantly because they loved thee. Have not I also won that reward?”
Feriz Beg sadly lowered his head as if it afflicted him to think of the significance of these words; then softly, gently, he bent over the damsel, and drawing her lovely head towards him, pressed a warm, feeling kiss on her marble forehead.
The odalisque trembled with rapture beneath the load of that more than earthly sensation of pleasure, and leaping up and stretching her arms to Heaven, she whispered:
“I am happy!—For the first time in my life. Now I may go—and die.”
Feriz, tenderly embracing her, led the damsel to her skiff. Then she stopped suddenly, and leaning her head against the shoulder of the youth, murmured in his ear:
“When thou reachest thy kiosk, lie not down to sleep! Sit at thy window and look towards the island in the direction of sunrise. The night will be over ere long, and the dawn will come sooner than at other times. When thou seest this portent think of me and say for me the prayer which is used before the cold dawn, and say from thy heart: ‘That woman does penance for her sins!’ ”
The odalisque felt two teardrops falling upon her cheek. They fell from the eyes of the youth.
She could never feel happier in this world than she felt now.
A few minutes later the skiff was flying over the rocking waves.
XX
The Victim
The Princess was saved, but she who had saved her was doomed.
Along the banks of the rivers, and on the summits of the bastions, alarm-beacons had been kindled announcing the flight of the fugitives. It was late. On the shore the swift Arab horses of the pursuers were racing with the wind. But the wind was not idle, but blew and raged and fought with the foaming waves of the Danube, and tossed and pitched about every little boat that lay upon it.
There was only one skiff, however, that ventured to cross the Danube and rise and fall with its billows, which were like the waves of the sea. A white form stood stonily motionless in the boat, and the blast kept twisting its soft garments round its body. The trembling boatman called upon the name of Allah.
“Fear not, when you carry me,” Azrael said to him, and her eyes hung upon a star which shone above her head, shining through the tatters of the scurrying clouds.
The skiff reached the shore of the Margaret island. The damsel got out, and her last bracelet dropped from her hand into the hand of the boatman.
“Remember me, and begone.”
“Dost thou remain here?”
“No.”
“Whither wilt thou go?”
Azrael answered nothing, but pointed mutely to the sky.
The boatman did not understand much about it; but, anyhow, he understood that he could not give the damsel a lift up there, so he drew back his canoe and departed.
Azrael remained alone on the island, quite alone; for that day everyone had been withdrawn by command of the Vizier; the damsels, the guards, and the eunuchs had all migrated to the fortress, the paradise was empty and uninhabited.
Azrael strolled the whole length of the shore of the island. The mortars were still thundering down from the fortress, the horsemen were still shouting on the river’s bank, the signal fires were blazing on the bastions, the night was dark, the wind blew tempestuously and scattered the leaves of the trees—but she saw neither the beacon fires, nor the darkness; she heard neither the tumult of men nor the howling of the blast; in her soul there was the light of heaven and an angelic harmony with which no rumour, no shape of the outer world would intermingle.
She came to the kiosk in the centre of the island. Wandering aimlessly she had hit upon the labyrinthine way to it unawares. The sudden view of the summerhouse startled her, and it awoke a twofold sensation in her heart, it appealed equally to her memory and her imagination. She bethought her of the resolve she had made on coming to the island. She remembered that when she parted from the youth of her heart she had said: “When thou comest to thy kiosk, do not lie down to sleep; sit down at thy window, and look towards the island in the direction of the dawn. This night will be soon over, and the dawn will dawn more quickly than at other times. When thou seest it think of me and say for me the prayer of direction for the departing.”
She reflected that the youth must now be sitting at the window, looking towards the island, with his fine eyes weary of staring into the darkness. She would not weary those fine eyes for long.
She hastily opened the door with her silver key and entered the hall. A hanging lamp was burning in the room just as the servants had left it in the morning. She drew forth a wax taper, and having lit it, proceeded to the other rooms, which opened one out of another, and whose floors were covered by precious oriental carpets, whose walls were inlaid with all manner of woods brought from foreign countries, and covered with tapestries, all splendid masterpieces of eastern art; the atmosphere of the rooms was heavy with intoxicating perfumes.
All this was frightful, abominable to her now. As she walked over the carpets, it was as if she were stepping on burning coals; when she inhaled the scented atmosphere, it was as though she were breathing the corruption of the pestilence; everything in these rooms awoke memories of sin and disgust in her heart—costly costumes, porcelain vases, silver bowls, all of them the playthings of loathsome moments, whose keenest punishment was that she was obliged to remember them.
But they shall all perish. And if they all perish, if these
