as a prison would be. And there were twenty-four other girls in the haremlik, each with her own memory of sufferings, more terrible even, some of them, than had been my own.
Ahmed Bey, himself, was very old, yet some of these twenty-four girls had been sacrificed to him. The others had been divided between his two sons. Ahmed was, perhaps, a truer type of the fanatical Turk than any whose victim I had yet been. His interest seemed not to be so much in the young women themselves, as in the children he wanted them to bear to his sons—children in whom the blood of the noble Armenian race might be blended with that of the savage Turk, and who might live to perpetuate and improve the blood of his family.
I was summoned before Ahmed Bey the next day. I had asked for clothing, but the haremlik attaches would not give me any, nor would they allow me to accept garments from other girls in the harem. “Not until Ahmed indicates his desires,” was the answer of the kalfa to my pleadings.
Ahmed Bey spoke to me gently, but it was with the gentleness that hurts worse than blows. “You are to be one of the favored of my women,” he said, “because you have been sent to my house by His Excellency, Djevdet Bey.” He gave a sign, and a little slave girl appeared with the rich dress of a favored Turkish girl. “Many of these and many ornaments, as well
