household and their children, and the rest of their time is devoted to
needlework." (At this statement I gave the brother-in-law a smile as
incredulous as his own.)

All this time the fair-haired interpretess had not been allowed by the
vigilant guardian of the harem to utter a word.

I turned to her with a question.

"So your mother is French, _Mademoiselle_?"

"_Oui, Madame_."

"From what part of France did she come?"

A bewildered pause. Finally, "I don't know . . . from Switzerland, I
think," brought out this shining example of the Higher Education. In
spite of Algerian "advantages" the poor girl could speak only a few
words of her mother's tongue. She had kept the European features and
complexion, but her soul was the soul of Islam. The harem had placed its
powerful imprint upon her, and she looked at me with the same remote and
passive eyes as the daughters of the house.

After struggling for a while longer with a conversation which the
watchful brother-in-law continued to direct as he pleased, I felt my own
lips stiffening into the resigned smile of the harem, and it was a
relief when at last their guardian drove the pale flock away, and the
handsome old gentleman who owned them reappeared on the scene, bringing
back my friends, and followed by slaves and tea.

V

IN FEZ

What thoughts, what speculations, one wonders, go on under the narrow
veiled brows of the little creatures destined to the high honour of
marriage or concubinage in Moroccan palaces?

Some are brought down from mountains and cedar forests, from the free
life of the tents where the nomad women go unveiled. Others come from
harems in the turreted cities beyond the Atlas, where blue palm-groves
beat all night against the stars and date-caravans journey across the
desert from Timbuctoo. Some, born and bred in an airy palace among
pomegranate gardens and white terraces, pass thence to one of the feudal
fortresses near the snows, where for half the year the great chiefs of
the south live in their clan, among fighting men and falconers and packs
of _sloughis_. And still others grow up in a stifling Mellah, trip
unveiled on its blue terraces overlooking the gardens of the great, and,
seen one day at sunset by a fat vizier or his pale young master, are
acquired for a handsome sum and transferred to the painted sepulchre of
the harem.

Worst of all must be the fate of those who go from tents and cedar
forests, or from some sea-blown ga