an I should be well received--and what other
European could say as much? There must be something of the Arab in
me, otherwise I shouldn't have lived amongst them so long, nor
should I speak Arabic as easily as I do, nor should I look--remember,
you thought I was an Arab."

"Yes, at first sight."

The admission was given somewhat unwillingly, not because Owen saw
Beclere differently, he still saw an Arab exterior, but he had begun
to recognise him as a Frenchman. Race characteristics are generally
imaginary; there are, shall we say, twenty millions of Frenchmen in
France, and every one is different; how therefore is it possible to
speak of race characteristics? Still, if one may differentiate at
all between the French and English races (but is there a French and
English race?) we know there is a negro race because it is black--
however, if there be any difference between England and France, the
difference is that France is more inclined to pedantry than England.
If one admits any race difference, one may admit this one; and, with
such thoughts in his mind, Owen began to perceive Beclere as the
typical French pedagogue, a clever man, one who if he had remained
in Paris would have become _un membre de l'Institut_.

Beclere, _un membre de l'Institut_, talking to the beautiful girl
whom Owen had seen that morning! Owen smiled a little under his
moustache, and, as there was plenty of time for meditation while
waiting for Tahar to return from Ain Mahdy, he spent a great deal of
time wondering if any sensual relations existed between Beclere and
this girl. Beclere as a lover appeared to him anomalous and
disparate--that is how Beclere would word it himself, but these
pedants were very often serious sensualists. We easily associate
conventional morality with red-tapeism, for it seems impossible to
believe that the stodgy girl who spends her morning in the British
Museum working at the higher mathematics or Sanscrit is likely to
spend her afternoon in bed, yet this is what happens frequently; the
real sensualist is the pedant; "and, if one wants love, the real
genuine article," whispered a thought, "one must seek it among
clergymen's daughters."

That girl Beclere's mistress! Why not? The thought pleased and amused
him, reconciled him to Beclere, whom he never should have thought
capable of such fine discrimination. But it did not follow that
because Beclere had chosen a beautiful girl to love he was
susceptible to artistic