The great saloon was full of women. The ladies sat up on the dais with flourished handkerchiefs, beating their breasts, their faces, at each burst of woe. Dependants crouched upon the ground and rocked incessantly, with foaming lips. Some faces wore a hideous fixed grin; some mouthed continually. The hired performers stood and chanted with obscene contortions, or squatted on a mat and wailed in chorus. The words “O my calamity,” recurring in a sort of running chant without coherence, shook the assembly like a tempest-blast. And all the while dainties were being handed round by weeping servants, and accepted by the mourners as fresh cause for grief.

An ague of intense repugnance seized on Barakah. She felt that she must fly from this inferno, must keep the hope of flight before her resolutely, or her soul was lost. It was as if a hostile hand compressed her throat. She struggled, was determined to get free. Towards that end she battled with instinctive cunning.

After the meytam, when she seemed exhausted, her brain, enamoured of this hope, was planning madly.