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 The waters were to pour forth from her two extended hands—but none came. The gardener told me they had lost the key, and they had never been able to unlock it. And, as there were many more fountains in the place, they did not bother."

A cloud passed over her face.

"Then I am like your fountain."

She sat drooping, her hands clasped in her lap, gazing before her with that gaze which sees not the seen world. At length she shook off this mood and turned to the slave:

"Leila, go to the little bird's home, and say she is with us, and that I shall keep her till her mother returns. And you, Mihri, can go and make the room next to mine ready for this little child."

"Please don't call me 'little child,'" I exclaimed. "I am fourteen years old, and at my age my great-grandmother was married and had a son."

She paid no heed to my words, seeming to be lost in her own thoughts.

"When you go to Paris somebody accompanies you, of course."

"Not always. I know all the captains of the Fabre Line, and all the officers. I am placed in their care, and at Marseilles I take the train, and reach Paris the same day, where I am met. Anyway, I could go to the end of the world by myself."