She said to her one day:

“You are as white as I am. How can you bear to be a slave like Wardah or Fatûmah?”

“Not like Wardah or Fatûmah, if you please!” was the superb rejoinder. “They or their fathers were captured in a warlike raid and made to islam, I, God be praised, was born in the Faith. Look!” she cried, and with a splendid gesture bared her bosom. “This is the paste of which they make sultanas. My parents sold me⁠—they were poor⁠—that I might come to honour, as others of the family have done before me.”

“But what chance have you here? Do you expect to captivate the Pasha?”

“God forbid! I never even see him. Here I serve the sweetest of all ladies, who will one day find me a rich husband. It is a famed harem, and my lady is renowned for goodness and refinement. The greatest in the land would not disdain a fair Circassian girl of her instructing.”