“As easily as dung can change its odour!”

“Gulbeyzah here is whiter and more appetizing.”

“Well, God alone knows what she is or is not. This is sure: I have no itching to go down into the house while Fitnah Khânum rages.”

“Nor I!” “Nor I!” exclaimed the rest with feeling.

The morning clamour of the city came up to them as a soothing murmur. Minarets dreamed round them in the sun-haze which was rosy at its heart but in the distance pearly with a tinge of brown. On one hand open country might be seen, green fields and palm trees crowding to the desert wave on which three pyramids stood out, minute as ciphers; on the other, ending the long ridge of the Mucattam Hill, arose the Citadel in smoky shadow, its Turkish dome and minarets, its towers and ramparts, appearing like a city of the sky. Here and there among the housetops a small cloud of doves went up, fluttered a moment and subsided peacefully. Kites hovered, crows were circling, in the upper air. Gulbeyzah watched their evolutions dreamily.