movement, the slight noise which his bare feet made,
the feeling of the fresh air on her skin and in her lungs, roused Allouma
from her lethargy. She stretched out her arms, turned over, opened her
eyes, and looked at me and then Mohammed with the same indifference; then
she sat up in bed and said: 'I am hungry.'

"'What would you like?'

"'Kahoua.'

"'Coffee and bread and butter.'

"'Yes.'

"Mohammed remained standing close to our bed, with my clothes under his
arm, waiting for my orders.

"'Bring breakfast for Allouma and me,' I said to him.

"He went out, without his face betraying the slightest astonishment or
anger, and as soon as he had left the room, I said to the girl:

"'Will you live in my house?'

"'I should like to, very much.'

"'I will give you a room to yourself, and a woman to wait on you.'

"'You are very generous, and I am grateful to you.'

"'But if you behave badly, I shall send you away immediately.'

"'I will do everything that you wish me to.'

"She took my hand, and kissed it as a token of submission, and just then
Mohammed came in, carrying a tray with our breakfast on it, and I said to
him:--

"'Allouma is going to live here. You must spread a carpet on the floor of
the room at the end of the passage, and get Abd-El-Kader-El-Hadara's wife
to come and wait on her.'

"'Yes, _mo'ssieuia_.'

"That was all.

"An hour later, my beautiful Arab was installed in a large, airy, light
room, and when I went in to see that everything was in order, she asked
me in a supplicating voice, to give her a wardrobe with a looking-glass
in the doors. I promised her one, and then I left her squatting on the
carpet from Djebel-Amour, with a cigarette in her mouth, and gossiping
with the old Arab woman I had sent for, as if they had known each other
for years."

II

"For a month I was very happy with her, and I got strangely attached to
this creature belonging to another race, who seemed to me almost to
belong to some other species, and to have been born on a neighboring
planet.

"I did not love her; no, one does not love the women of that primitive
continent. This small, pale blue flower of Northern countries never
unfolds between them and us, or even between them and their natural
males, the Arabs. They are too near to human animalism, their hearts are
too rudimentary, their feelings are not refined enough to rouse that
sentimental exaltation in us, which is the poetry of love. Nothing