CHAPTER XXVI

A HOPELESS PRISONER

Panayota was walking to and fro in a room whose one window looked straight against the blank wall of a house not ten feet distant. A grating of iron bars prevented her escape in that direction and the door was locked. She was very pale and there were deep circles under her eyes. She was muttering as one distracted. Occasionally she raised her eyes and hands to heaven.

"Dear little Virgin, all Holy One, save me from this infamy, from the pollution of the Turk. Save me in any way, help me to escape or to die!"

After each prayer she stood listening, as though waiting for an immediate response--some miraculous intervention in her behalf. Often seized by utter despair, she sank her fingers deep into her thick brown locks, and cried:

"No help, no help, O God! O God!"

At every sound of a footstep without, or of any commotion in the court below, her pale face grew paler, and she trembled with fear and revulsion. She was expecting Kostakes. For a week now the girl had been shut up in this manner. Kostakes had left her in the care of his harem, with stern commands that she be kindly treated and all her wants supplied. Ayesha and Souleima had derived much pleasure from attending upon Panayota, as though she were indeed a member of the harem and their lord's favorite; for thus they caused Ferende, whom they cordially hated, much unhappiness. It seemed to Panayota that she had been in captivity an age. For the first three or four days she had hoped for a rescue by Lindbohm and Curtis and their band of insurgents. Time and again the wild scenes which she had witnessed passed through her mind as she stood with hands clasped and eyes half closed in the middle of the floor. She saw again the impetuous Swede chasing Ampates out of town because the scoundrel had wished to give her up; she saw Curtis standing before her with his smoking rifle, while the fallen Turk, his features still twitching in the death agony, lay at her feet.

But as the days passed and no help came, her keen hope faded into the blackness of despair.

"They cannot find me," she moaned; "perhaps they're dead. Perhaps they think I have yielded to the Turk, and they despise me. Do they not know that I would die first?" Whenever she thought of death, her mind involuntarily sought for some method by which she could accomplish it, if worst came to worst. To hold her breath, to plunge her head against the side of the wall, to strangle herself with a strip torn from her bed clothing,--all these ideas suggested themselves. And as often as she thought of self-destruction, there rose to memory a slender white shaft that had frequently been pointed out to her in childhood. For there had once been a suicide in her native village, and the body had been buried in a lonely place on a hill, far away from the holy comradeship, the blessed crosses and the benediction of God's acre. This isolated tomb had made a great impression on her childish mind. She and the other children had always crossed themselves when they saw it, and they never mentioned the dead man's name. It seemed a terrible thing not to be buried in consecrated ground.