towards the home of the purple
dog. She did not know at the moment that anything had influenced her to
choose that particular path, but very soon the sound of Larbi's flute
grew louder, and she guessed that in reality the music had attracted
her. Androvsky walked beside her without a word. She felt that he
was not looking about him, not noticing anything, and all at once she
stopped decisively.

"Why should we take all this trouble?" she said bluntly. "I hate
pretence and I thought I had travelled far away from it. But we are both
pretending."

"Pretending, Madame?" he said in a startled voice.

"Yes. I that I want to show you this garden, you that you want to see
it. I no longer wish to show it to you, and you have never wished to see
it. Let us cease to pretend. It is all my fault. I bothered you to come
here when you didn't want to come. You have taught me a lesson. I was
inclined to condemn you for it, to be angry with you. But why should I
be? You were quite right. Freedom is my fetish. I set you free, Monsieur
Androvsky. Good-bye."

As she spoke she felt that the air was clearing, the clouds were flying.
Constraint at least was at an end. And she had really the sensation of
setting a captive at liberty. She turned to leave him, but he said:

"Please, stop, Madame."

"Why?"

"You have made a mistake."

"In what?"

"I do want to see this garden."

"Really? Well, then, you can wander through it."

"I do not wish to see it alone."

"Larbi shall guide you. For half a franc he will gladly give up his
serenading."

"Madame, if you will not show me the garden I will not see it at all. I
will go now and will never come into it again. I do not pretend."

"Ah!" she said, and her voice was quite changed. "But you do worse."

"Worse!"

"Yes. You lie in the face of Africa."

She did not wish or mean to say it, and yet she had to say it. She knew
it was monstrous that she should speak thus to him. What had his lies to
do with her? She had been told a thousand, had heard a thousand told to
others. Her life had been passed in a world of which the words of the
Psalmist, though uttered in haste, are a clear-cut description. And
she had not thought she cared. Yet really she must have cared. For, in
leaving this world, her soul had, as it were, fetched a long breath. And
now, at the hint of a lie, it instinctively recoiled as from a gust of
air laden with some poisonous and suffocating vapour.

"Forgive me,"