Africa. And so we did at first. We
got into a hotel at Algiers. She was housemaid, and I was porter in the
hall, and what with the goings and comings--strangers giving us a little
when we'd done our best for them--we made some money, and we saved it.
And I wish to God we'd spent it, every sou!"

His voice became fierce for a moment. Then he continued, with an obvious
effort to be calm: "You see, m'sieu, at Algiers we had nothing to say to
the Arabs. With the money we'd saved we left Algiers, and came into the
desert to take a cafe which was to let near the station at Beni-Mora."

"I've just come from there."

"They call it 'Au Retour du Sahara.'"

"I've had coffee there."

"That was ours, and there little Marie was born. In those days there
weren't many strangers in Beni-Mora. The railway had only just come
there, and it was wild enough. Very few, except the Arabs. Well, they
were often our customers. We learned to talk a bit of their language,
and they a bit of ours; and, having no friends out there, I might say we
made sort of friends with some of them. The dirty dogs! The camels!"

He struck his clenched hand down on the table. As he talked he had lost
his former consciousness of my close observation.

"But they know how to please women, m'sieu.

"They are often very handsome," I said.

"It isn't only that. They can stare a woman down as a wild beast
can, and that's what women like. I never so much as looked on them as
men--not in that way, for a Cassis woman, m'sieu. But Marie----"

He choked, ground his teeth on his cigar stump, let it drop, and stamped
out the glowing end on the brick floor with his heel.

"She served them, m'sieu," he resumed, after clearing his throat. "But
I was mostly there, and I don't see how--but women can always find the
way. Well, one day she went to what they call a sand-diviner. She didn't
pretend anything. She told me she wanted to go, and I was ready. I was
always ready that she should have any little pleasure. I couldn't leave
the cafe, so she went off alone to a room he had by the Garden of the
Gazelles, at the end of the dancing-street."

"I know--over the place where they smoke the kief."

"She didn't answer, but went and sat down under the arbour, opposite to
where they wash the clothes. I followed her, for she looked ill.

"'Did he read in the sand for you?' I said.

"'Yes,' she said; 'he did.'

"'What things did he read?'

"She turned, and looked right at m