“ ‘What are you doing here?’ I said to her in Arabic.
“ ‘I am here because I was told to come.’
“ ‘Who told you to come?’
“ ‘Mohammed.’
“ ‘All right. Sit down.’
“She sat down and lowered her eyes, while I stood looking at her.
“She had an unusual face: with regular, refined features with a slightly animal expression, but mystical like that of a Buddha. Her thick lips, coloured with a kind of reddish bloom which was also apparent elsewhere on her skin, pointed to a slight mixture of Negro blood, although her hands and arms were irreproachably white.
“Perplexed, tempted and embarrassed, I felt doubtful as to what I ought to do. In order to gain time, and to give myself an opportunity to consider the problem, I asked further questions about her origin, her arrival in this country and her connection with Mohammed. But she only answered those which least interested me, and I found it impossible to ascertain why or when she had come, with what object, on whose orders, or what had taken place between her and my servant.
“Just as I was going to tell her to return to Mohammed’s tent, she apparently anticipated my words, suddenly drew herself up, and raising her bare arms, while the tinkling bracelets slid in a mass towards her shoulders, she clasped her hands behind my neck and drew me towards her with an air of entreaty and irresistible wilfulness.
“Her eyes, burning with the desire to bewitch, with that need of conquest that imparts a feline fascination to the immodest gaze of a woman, appealed to me, captivated me, robbed me of all power of resistance, and roused me to an impetuous passion. It was a short, silent and violent struggle carried on through the medium of the eyes alone, the eternal struggle between the primitive man and woman, in which man is always conquered.
“Her hands behind my head drew me, with slow, increasing irresistible pressure, towards her smiling red lips, to which I suddenly pressed mine, holding her close to me, while the silver bangles, from her throat to her feet, jingled under the pressure.
“She was as wiry, supple and healthy as an animal, with the tricks and movements, the grace and even the scent of a gazelle, which gave her kisses a rare indescribable flavour, as foreign to my senses as a taste of some tropical fruit.
“After a while … I say after a while, it was perhaps as dawn was breaking, I decided to send her away, thinking that she would go just as she had come. I had not yet considered what I would do with her, or what she would do with me. But as soon as she understood my intention, she murmured:
“ ‘If you send me away, where would you have me go? I will have to sleep out of doors, in the dark. Let me sleep on the carpet at the foot of your bed.’
“What could I say? What could I do? I reflected that Mohammed, in his turn, was doubtless watching the lighted window of my room, and all kinds of problems, which had not occurred to me in the embarrassment of the first few moments, now confronted me.
“ ‘Stay here,’ I said; ‘We must talk it over.’
“My decision was made almost immediately. Since this girl had been thrown into my arms, I would keep her as a kind of slave mistress, hidden in my house, like the women of the harems. When she no longer pleased me, it would always be easy to get rid of her somehow, for in Africa these creatures belong to us almost body and soul.
“ ‘I will be kind to you,’ I said, ‘I will treat you well, but I want to know who you are, and where you come from.’
“She understood that she had to tell me something, and related her story to me, or rather a story, for she was probably lying from beginning to end, as Arabs invariably do, with or without a motive.
“The habit of lying is one of the most surprising and incomprehensible features of the native character. These people who are so steeped in Islamism that it forms a part of them, governs their instincts, modifies their racial characteristics and differentiates them from others in mental outlook as much as the colour of the skin differentiates the Negro from the white man, are liars to the backbone, to such an extent that one can never believe what they say. Do they owe it to their religion? I cannot say. One must have lived among them to understand to what a degree falsehood forms a part of their whole existence and becomes a kind of second nature, a necessity of life.
“She told me, then, that she was a daughter of a Caid of Ouled Sidi Cheik and of a woman captured by him in a raid on the Touaregs. This woman must have been a black slave, or at least the offspring of an earlier mixture of Arab and Negro blood. It is well known that Negresses are highly prized in harems, where they play the part of aphrodisiacs.
“Nothing of this origin was evident except in the purplish colour of her lips and the dark flush on her long supple breasts. The rest belonged to the beautiful Southern race, white and slender, her features as simple and regular as the head of an Indian image, a likeness which was enhanced by her wide-set eyes.
“Of her real life I could get no real information. She described it to me in disconnected trifles which seemed to pour haphazard from a confused memory, mingled with delightfully childish remarks. It was like a picture of nomadic life from the brain of a squirrel leaping from tent to tent, from camp to camp and from tribe to tribe.
“All this was narrated with the serious air which this strange race always preserves, with the expression of an idol descending to gossip, and with a rather comical gravity.
“When she had finished, I realized that
