“I reflected on this conquered race in the midst of whom we settle, or rather, who settle in the midst of us, whose language we are beginning to speak, whose everyday life we see going on under the flimsy canvas of their tents, on whom we impose our laws, our regulations and our customs, and of whom we know nothing. All this, mark you, goes on as though we were not there, as though we had not been watching little else for nearly sixty years. We no more know what happens under that hut made of branches or under that little cone of cloth anchored to the ground with stakes, than we know what the so-called civilised Arabs in the Moorish houses in Algiers are doing or thinking. Behind the whitewashed walls of their dwellings in the city, behind the leafy screens of their huts or behind the brown curtain of camel skin flapping in the wind, they live on our thresholds unknown, mysterious, sly and untrustworthy, smiling and impenetrable in their submission. Believe me, when I look at the neighbouring encampment from a distance through my field glasses, I find that they have superstitions, ceremonies and innumerable customs still unknown and not even suspected by us! Never, perhaps, has a race conquered by force been able to escape so completely from any effective domination, moral influence or persistent but useless inquiry on the part of their conquerors.
“I suddenly felt, as never before, that secret and impassable barrier which nature has mysteriously erected between the races, raised between me and that Arab girl who had just offered herself to me.
“Thinking of it for the first time, I asked her:
“ ‘What is your name?’
“She had been silent for some minutes, and I saw her start involuntarily as if she had forgotten that I was there. Then I saw in her eyes that the short interval had been sufficient for sleep to claim her, a sudden irresistible slumber, almost overwhelming, like everything that seizes the changing fancies of women.
“She replied dully, stifling a yawn: ‘Allouma.’
“ ‘You want to go to sleep?’ I continued.
“ ‘Yes,’ she replied.
“ ‘Very well, then, sleep,’ I said.
“She quietly stretched herself by my side, lying face down, her forehead resting on her crossed arms, and I felt almost at once that her primitive, fugitive thoughts had vanished in sleep.
“As for me, lying near her, I began to wonder why Mohammed had given her to me. Had he played the part of the generous and self-sacrificing servant who gives up the woman he had taken for himself, or had he acted on an idea more complex and practical in thus giving up to me this girl who had taken my fancy? An Arab, where women are concerned, has the most rigorous standards coupled with the most inexplicable tolerance, and one can understand his stern yet easygoing morality no better than his other feelings. Perhaps in my chance entry into his tent I had forestalled the kindly intentions of this thoughtful servant who had intended for me this woman, his friend, perhaps even his mistress.
“Tormented by all these possibilities, I became so tired that, in my turn, I gradually fell into a deep slumber.
“The creaking of my door aroused me; Mohammed was coming in to wake me as he did every morning. He opened the window, through which poured a flood of daylight, lighting up the figure of Allouma still asleep on the bed; then he gathered up my trousers, waistcoat and jacket from the floor in order to brush them. He did not look at the woman lying by my side, he did not even appear to notice that she was there, and his gravity, his demeanour and his expression were the same as usual. But the light and movement, the slight patter of the man’s bare feet, and the feeling of the fresh air on her skin and in her lungs roused Allouma from her torpor. She stretched her arms, turned over and opened her eyes, looked at me and at Mohammed with the same indifference, and sat up. Then she murmured:
“ ‘I am hungry now.’
“ ‘What will you have to eat?’ I inquired.
“ ‘Kahoua.’33
“ ‘Coffee with bread and butter?’
“ ‘Yes.’
“Mohammed, standing near our bed, my clothes over his arm, waited for orders.
“ ‘Bring something to eat for Allouma and myself,’ I told him, and he went out without the least trace of astonishment or annoyance on his face.
“When he had gone, I asked the young Arab girl:
“ ‘Do you wish to live in my house?’
“ ‘Yes, I am willing.’
“ ‘I will give you a room for yourself, and a woman to wait on you.’
“ ‘You are generous, and I am grateful for it.’
“ ‘But if you do not behave yourself, I will send you away from here.’
“ ‘I will do anything you want of me.’
“She took my hand and kissed it, in token of submission.
“Mohammed returned, bringing a tray with breakfast.
“ ‘Allouma is going to live in the house,’ I told him. ‘Spread some rugs in the room at the end of the passage, and send for the wife of Abd-el-Kaderel-Hadara to come and wait on her.’
“ ‘Yes, sir.’
“That was all he said.
“An hour later, my beautiful Arab girl was installed in a large, well-lighted room; and when I came to see that everything was right, she entreated me to give her a wardrobe with a mirror on the door. I promised and left her squatting on a rug made in Jebel-Amour, a cigarette in her mouth, and gossiping with the old Arab woman whom I had engaged, as if they had known each other all their lives.
II
“For a month I was very happy with her, and in a queer fashion I became attached to this creature of
