The Eastern ladies were so calm and strong compared with her; they flinched at nothing except impropriety. The slaughter of a thousand sheep at Curban Bairam, turning the kitchen court into a shambles, caused them no disgust. It was ordained of God, they told her, and it fed the poor. They had no horror of disease or death or filthy persons, and, though most cleanly, looked on vermin philosophically. The Turks and the Circassians, with their grand ideals, appeared more dreadful than the Africans, whose faith was childlike. Barakah preferred the latter. Her pleasure was in feasts and little outings, in storytellers, dancers, and musicians who beguile the time; her only rapture was in adoration of her small Muhammad.

Her hidden yearnings and beliefs clung round the boy. She dwelt in longing for the days when he should be her friend. He was her hope, the product of both parts of her divided life; giving it sense and sequence, and, in the end perhaps, if Allah willed, consistency. She dreamt of a great future for him, to astonish Europe. But in the meanwhile, being sometimes dull, she felt the need of an intelligent, discreet companion.