door she did not knock. It opened as by magic of its own accord.
My first glimpse of the interior corresponded exactly with the pictures of my imagination; for in 1885 Turkish homes still preserved all their oriental customs. The hall was large, dark, and gloomy; and the eunuch, who had opened the door by pulling his rope, added to its terrors. And since that was a great festival day, and many ladies were calling, the hall was lined with these sinister black men, the whites of whose eyes glistened in the darkness.
Still hand in hand, Djimlah and I mounted a flight of dark, carpetless stairs and came to a landing screened by very much the same kind of a curtain as those that hang outside the doors of the Catholic churches on the Continent.
"Open!" Djimlah cried, and silently two eunuchs drew aside the curtains, and we passed to another flight of bare stairs, now full of light and sunshine. With the sun a peal of laughter greeted us, and when we reached the upper hall I felt a trifle less afraid.
Scrambling about on rugs were what seemed to me at first to be a thousand young women, very much like my Kiamelé, dressed in as many colours as there were heads, barefooted and bare-*armed. They were having the greatest frolics, and laughing like a pack of children.
"Hullo, there!" cried Djimlah.
