three in the afternoon
When at last I did sit up , the girl was standing near me , with a sort of smile , holding out to me the cangiar in a pouring rain . I took it from her , and my doddering fingers dropped it into the stream . * * * * * Pour , pour came the rain , raining as it can in this place , not long , but a deluge while it lasts , dripping in thick-liquidity , like a profuse sweat , through the forest , I seeking to get back by the way I had come , flying , but with difficulty and slowness , and a feeling in me that I was being tracked . And so it proved : for when I struck into more open space , nearly opposite the west walls , but now on the north side of the Golden Horn , where there is a flat grassy ground somewhere between the valley of Kassim and Charkoi , with horror I saw that _ protégée _ of Heaven , or of someone , not ten yards behind , following me like a mechanical figure , it being now near three in the afternoon , and the rain drenching me through , and I tired and hungry , and from all the ruins of Constantinople not one whiff of smoke ascending . I trudged on wearily till I came to the quay of Foundoucli , and the zaptia boat ; and there she was with me still , her hair nothing but a thin drowned string down her back . * * * * * Not only can she not speak to me in any language that I know : but she can speak in _ no _ language : it is my firm belief that she has _ never _ spoken . She never saw a boat , or water , or the world , till now -- I could swear it .