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I suppose it needed some courage to come to Turkey, braving the Custom house and passport officers even with special “protection”; but I met with no difficulties whatever. My companion only seemed puzzled by my name being the same as my father’s! A Turkish woman, of course, would be, e.g., Aïché Hanoun, wife of Rechid Pasha, or daughter of Zia Pasha. But have no foreign women, bearing their father’s name, been through the Smyrna customs, or am I not only the first British woman to visit Angora, but the first British spinster to enter Turkey?

Something of all I owed to the Vali for his “speeding up” of the customary formalities was forcibly impressed on me when I went back for my Turkish papers, to find one of my fellow-passengers, a Frenchman, still struggling with his passport and the custom duties.

The Vali’s konak (or palace) which I had long known from pictures, looks on to public gardens where the band plays every afternoon a strange mixture of Oriental and European music. It was delightful to hear Oriental tunes again, if indeed one can call Oriental music a tune. Anything in the major key seems out of focus with Turkey, its atmosphere, its scenery, and surroundings. The more one hears and understands the piercing melancholy of these refrains the more one loves them; and I am particularly grateful to all those Turks (M. Kemal Pasha included) who entertained me with the true native work.