"Then help me--pray help me!" whispered Helen, prayerfully, and she flung her arms round the swarthy girl, and held her to her breast. "Help me to get away, for I do not love Murad, and you do!" The girl started and thrust Helen away, but only to cling to her in turn after a moment's pause. "Yes, I think I love him," she said, softly, "though he is very cruel to me now." "And you hate me--very much--because--because Murad loves me?" whispered Helen, with a shudder. "I don't think I hate you very much," said the girl, softly. "You need not hate me--indeed you need not!" whispered Helen, and her voice, her very ways were changed now. The old pride was entirely gone, and she spoke with winning, womanly sweetness, full of tenderness and caress, as she nestled closer and closer to the girl. "You need not hate me," she repeated, "for I detest this Murad--I loathe him! I love some one else! Help me, then, to get back to my own people--to escape from Murad. Help me, or I shall die!" The girl was silent. "Oh," moaned Helen, "she does not understand anything I say!" "Yes," said the girl, softly, "I understand." "Then you pretended you could not!" cried Helen, wrathfully. "Murad ordered me to pretend that I only knew my own tongue," said the girl. "But no, I cannot help you, and you will not die. I thought so once; but we do not die because we are taken from our homes and people. Murad makes us love him, and then we forget the past, for we know that it is our fate." Helen's heart sank as she listened to the girl's words, so full of patient resignation, and she wondered whether she would ever be like this. There was not a ray of hope now in her utterances, and for the moment, in the horror of the despair that came upon her, she felt frantic. Thrusting her companion from her, she made a dash for the entrance, beating and tearing at it in her madness, as she uttered a series of loud hysteric cries. She shook the door fiercely, but her efforts were in vain; and as she strove to reach the window her fit of excitement seemed to pass, leaving her weak and despairing, heart-sick too, as she felt how lowering her acts must be in the sight of her companions; for the second girl had now sprung up, and she felt herself dragged back to her couch, and there compelled to stay. They both joined in scolding her angrily; and feeling her helplessness, a strange feeling of weakness came over the prisoner, and she lay there at last a prey to despair, as she realised now more fully how slight was her prospect of escape--how much slighter was the chance of Neil Harley coming to her help, however earnestly he might have searched. Before morning, when her companions had once more sunk to sleep, in spite of the hope that she felt of perhaps after all winning one of them to her side, so terribly had her misery of feeling increased, that as she pondered on her state, she found herself praying that Neil Harley might never look upon her face again.