rous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her
imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, the despair. No
wonder the invertebrate soul could do no more for her daughter than
teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing.
Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness
for women; but four years have elapsed since her death, and her stories
are only elusive memories in Carlotta's mind.

It is strange that among the deadening influences of the harem she has
kept the hereditary alertness of the Englishwoman. She has a baby mouth,
it is true; she pleads to you with the eyes of a dog; her pretty ways
are those of a young child; but she has not the dull, soulless, sensual
look of the pure-bred Turkish woman, such as I have seen in Cairo
through the transparent veils. In them there is no attraction save of
the flesh; and that only for the male who, deformity aside, reckons
women as merely so much cubical content of animated matter placed
by Allah at his disposal for the satisfaction of his desires and the
procreation of children. I cannot for the life of me understand an
Englishman falling in love with a Turkish woman. But I can quite
understand him falling in love with Carlotta. The hereditary qualities
are there, though they have been forced into the channel of sex, and
become a sort of diabolical witchery whereof I am not quite sure whether
she is conscious. For all that, I don't think she can have a soul.
I have made up my mind that she hasn't, and I don't like having my
convictions disturbed.

Until I saw her perched in the corner of the sofa, with her legs tucked
up under her, and the light playing a game of magic amid the reds and
golds and browns of her hair, while she cheerily discoursed to us of
Hamdi's villainy, I never noticed the dull decorum of this room. I was
struck with the decorative value of mere woman.

I must break myself of the habit of wandering off on a meditative
tangent to the circle of conversation. I was brought back by hearing
Pasquale say:

"So you're going to marry an Englishman. It's all fixed and settled,
eh?"

"Of course," laughed Carlotta.

"Have you made up your mind what he is to be like?"

I could see the unconscionable Don Juan instinctively preen himself
peacock fashion.

"I am going to marry Seer Marcous," said Carlotta, calmly.

She made this announcement not as a jest, not as a wish, but as the
commo