Yamina came down the staircase into the kitchen where Hamid was waiting for her.

She was wearing the basic garments of every Turkish woman and the long loose sleeves of her entari fell back from the gauze sleeves of her chemise.

On her legs were the salvar or wide trousers caught at the ankle. Her hair was unbound and she wore the traditional talpock, a small flat and round tasselled cap, a little on one side of her head.

“Do I look all right?” she asked Hamid.

He looked her over carefully before he replied gravely,

“You are quite correct, Mistress!”

Yamina was aware as she dressed that Mihri had sent her only cheap ordinary garments such as might be expected of a girl coming from a poor Circassian home. She was sure that when she reached the harem there would be different clothes awaiting her.

She felt strange as she put them on and completed the whole ensemble with the small embroidered Turkish slippers that turned up at the toes.

There was a veil to be worn over her face and over everything else a black ferejeh that every Turkish woman wore in the streets.

There was, however, no question of Yamina walking to the Dolmabahçe Palace.

A sedan chair carried by two black deaf mutes had been sent for her, a precaution, Yamina knew, so that they could never say where she had come from – Hamid was to escort the chair in which she travelled to the gateway of the Palace and after that he would leave her in Sahin’s hands, who would deliver her to Mihri.

That much she knew but it was little enough and it made her feel as if already she had set the wheels of some gigantic machine in motion and now she must be propelled forward by it into the unknown.

As she stood in the kitchen with Hamid’s eyes on her Turkish garments, Yamina thought how strange her life had become. This time last year she had expected nothing more eventful than the journey to and back from the Crimea to St. Petersburg.

She thought of the social life, balls, Receptions and Assemblies that took place in the Russian Capital and the quiet peacefulness of the beautiful gardens of their summer home that stretched down to the Black Sea.

Now, in the course of a few months, she had been involved in the war, escaped to the Capital of her country’s enemies and now was preparing to enter the harem of the dreaded ‘Shadow of the Prophet Mohammed’!

It all seemed incredible and yet it was actually happening!

“Are you ready, Mistress?” Hamid asked.

She knew by the expression in his eyes that he was feeling anxious, as she was, about what the future might hold.

“I must say goodbye to the Master,” Yamina replied.

She went upstairs again leaving her veil and her ferejeh on the kitchen table.