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disillusion, the heartbreak, 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 purebred 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 commonplace statement of a fact. There was a moment of
stupefied silence. Pasquale who had just struck a match to light

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