reparable breach. Hadidje, Nazli, and Zouhra,
confident in a dominion which appears to them henceforth assured, admire
my great qualities as a dispenser of justice.

My dear Louis, do you wish me to confess to you the most remarkable
consequence of this business? Yes, of course you do. I promised that
this psychological study should be conducted with sincerity, and that
nothing should be shirked. Well then, in the course of my analytical
observations, this mystery with Kondje-Gul, these tastings of forbidden
fruit, form certainly the most exquisite experience I have met with. You
may tell me, if you like, that I am a _pandour_, and that my taste has
been perverted by a life of unbridled Epicureanism; you may tell me that
the charms of duplicity, of falsehood, and of this connivance in the
guise of a childish deception, are exercising a morbid fascination over
my demoralized heart. You may be right. I would only ask you to express
yourself somewhat less bluntly. At any rate, you will not, I presume,
expect me to account for the frailties of our mortal nature. I guess
what you are thinking--out with it!

Notwithstanding my fine array of principles and the strict vows I made
to myself to distribute my affections equally between my _cadines_, it
certainly looks very much as if I have selected a favourite. Have I
fallen to this extent? I don't know. What is the good, moreover, of
arguing about it? Is it true that undisturbed possession is the rock
upon which love splits, and that constraint, on the contrary, acts as a
spur to it? Instead of arguing aimlessly about such inconsistencies in
human nature, it seems to me much simpler to recognise in them, as
Kondje-Gul does, a decree of Fate. Can you blame me for sacrificing
futile theories to the higher motives by which I am guided?

The fact is that this necessity for dissimulation, these deceptions, and
these clandestine interviews, have produced between Kondje-Gul and me a
sort of spring-tide of delightful expansion of the affections. You
should see us in the daytime, both of us as stiff as starch in the
presence of the others. You should see the manoeuvres we perform in
order to exchange a sly smile or a shake of the hands out of sight. You
should see also what pretty little airs of disdain she puts on for her
rivals, who are slumbering in their paradise of illusion! If we are
alone by chance, she says,

"Quick! _your wives_ are not here," and throws herself into my arms.