The windows were framed in Renaissance garlands and festoons. There were frescoed walls, all very white, fresh and gaudy, and banal after the age-long history that had made the Seraglio so impressive.

Everywhere in the Palace there was a profusion of coloured glass, huge standards to hold the lights in glaring red, green and blue, vases, ornaments, and even coffee tables decorated with it.

The Sultan obviously had a decided preference for the glitter of enormous mirrors and Bohemian glass chandeliers in every colour, for glaringly painted ceilings and large and ponderous European-type chairs.

Some of the mosaics, however, were exquisite and the carved marble with its intricate patterns had a beauty that was indescribable.

What fascinated Yamina was the fantastic extravagance, which seemed outrageous when she remembered the poverty of the average Turk whom she had seen in the Bazaar and in the poorer parts of the City.

Dustpans of solid silver struck her as unnecessary and so were the real diamond buttons sewn onto modern kid-boots that had been imported from Paris to titillate the harem’s craving for Western chic.

There were umbrellas with gold ribs studded in sapphires, coffee cups chunked from a single emerald, and hand towels stiff with gold embroidery.

Coverlets of cloth-of-gold lined with sable were flung among the cushions, curtains were roped back with swags of pearls.

No favourite ever appeared before the Sultan in the same dress twice and, whatever extravagances the more favoured women perpetrated, the bills for their finery were never questioned.

Yamina was interested in the luxury of marble-walled toilettes, with fountains of running water attached to every suite of rooms.

The Sultan, she was told, had a bath of solid jasper, the pipes were of gold and silver, the walls scented with roses, musk and amber and aloes were kept constantly burning in censers.

Yet after a very short while her interest in all these novel sights began to pall and Yamina felt that the walls were beginning to close in on her so that she felt constricted and almost unable to breathe.

“How can I ever escape from here?” she asked Mihri when she felt that it was safe to talk intimately, which was only occasionally.

Mihri shrugged her shoulders.

“I don’t know,” she answered. “I learnt from Sahin that there was danger of your being arrested as a spy.”

“There was! They were talking of making a house-to-house search,” Yamina said, “and I was afraid not only for myself but also for Hamid.”

She did not relate to Mihri what she had seen happening in the Bazaar. She felt that she could not bear to speak about it.

But soon she found that almost every moment of every hour of every day she was wondering how soon she could get away and was beginning to feel that it was more and more impossible.

She could not help feeling that in every shadow there were the watchers and those who were watched.