rn poem.
Cassim used to give me the most gorgeous presents, and our house in
Algiers was beautiful. My garden was a dream--and how he made love to me
in it! Besides, I was allowed to go out, veiled. It was rather fun being
veiled--in those days, I thought so. It made me feel mysterious, as if
life were a masquerade ball. And the Arab women Cassim let me know--a
very few, wives and sisters of his friends--envied me immensely. I loved
that--I was so silly. And they flattered me, asking about my life in
Europe. I was like a fairy princess among them, until--one day--a woman
told me a thing about Cassim. She told me because she was spiteful and
wanted to make me miserable, of course, for I found out afterwards she'd
been expressly forbidden to speak, on account of my 'prejudices'--they'd
all been forbidden. I wouldn't believe at first,--but it was true--the
others couldn't deny it. And to prove what she said, the woman took me
to see the boy, who was with his grandmother--an aunt of Maieddine's,
dead now."

"The boy?"

"Oh, I forgot. I haven't explained. The thing she told was, that Cassim
had a wife living when he married me."

"Saidee!--how horrible! How horrible!"

"Yes, it was horrible. It broke my heart." Saidee was tingling with
excitement now. Her stiff, miserable restraint was gone in the feverish
satisfaction of speaking out those things which for years had corroded
her mind, like verdigris. She had never been able to talk to anyone in
this way, and her only relief had been in putting her thoughts on paper.
Some of the books in her locked cupboard she had given to a friend, the
writer of to-day's letter, because she had seen him only for a few
minutes at a time, and had been able to say very little, on the one
occasion when they had spoken a few words to each other. She had wanted
him to know what a martyrdom her life had been. Involuntarily she talked
to her sister, now, as she would have talked to him, and his face rose
clearly before her eyes, more clearly almost than Victoria's, which her
own shadow darkened, and screened from the light of the moon as they
stood together, clasped in one another's arms.

"Cassim thought it all right, of course," she went on. "A Mussulman may
have four wives at a time if he likes--though men of his rank don't, as
a rule, take more than one, because they must marry women of high birth,
who hate rivals in their own house. But he was too clever to give me a
hint of his real op