I was walking with Colonel Z., ten years ago, the first day I noticed him at the window; the big, lovely, dark eyes; the green swathed turban; the Persian robe; and on his face the look of the “peace that passeth understanding.” He must be the “Sower that went forth to sow,” I said, “please take me in to him.” “But I cannot,” said the colonel; and so, before he realised what I was doing, I just walked in myself and told the holy man that “I had come to look at his ‘beautiful face.’” After that I paid him many visits, sharing his coffee, making signs to the women, and watching his strange worship, that had not even any accompaniment of the piping flute. He told me that no Christian had ever before been admitted into the Tekké. “Do you consider me a heathen?” I asked. “No, we are all children of God. How can one of His children be a heathen?” * * * * * “What has become of the old man?” I asked my Turkish sister. “They ordered his son—you remember that fine lad—to say _Vive la Grèce, Vive Venizelos_, and when he refused, they shot him.” “But what of the old man?” “It broke his heart. One day he just fell asleep and did not wake again.” The harem door is still open. The little daughter, now thirteen, still calls me Tezajim (dear Aunt), and we find seats on the marble veranda to wait for the sun to set over the shores of the Marmora. “How often I think of you,” murmured my little sister, “trying and trying, day after day, to paint our sunset.” And when I repeated that to the late Sir Alfred East he laughed heartily, saying, “Dear child, Turner could not have done it?” * * * * * And who has taken the place of my attendant, Miss Chocolate? The slim figure of a coal-black negress appears to answer my question, robed in brown velvet, with a brown velvet toque. I must call her Miss Ink, though her name is Mary. I lunch with my Turkish sister as often as the poor sick woman can spare her, and she is generous. Yet eighteen of her friends are there already. This time my friend wears a fur coat and a black veil with lace over it. “Fancy calling _that_ a veil, I teased her. Yet I can count the steps taken in the progress of Turkish women by our lunches. The first time I came to Turkey, you wanted to go up in a lift, and though your father said neither ‘yea’ nor ‘nay,’ you did not go. The second time you often used the lift. The third time, we lunched at Tokatlian’s restaurant, ‘for ladies only.’ Now you lunch unveiled (I don’t call _that_ a veil) in a _mixed_ restaurant. “And yet, now you have won the privilege for which you have been waiting so many years, you prefer to lunch ‘with the ladies.’ How like a woman!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XXXIII