n't
you? I know you will."

She quivered like an optimistic Cassandra.

"My dear Lola," said I.

I was touched. I took her hand and raised it to my lips, whereat she
flushed like a girl.

"Did you come here to tell me all this?"

"No," she replied simply. "It came all of a sudden, as I was standing
here. I've often wanted to say it. I'm glad I have."

She threw back her head and regarded me a moment with a strange, proud
smile; then turned and walked slowly away, her head brushing the long
scarlet clusters of the pepper trees.

CHAPTER XVII

The other day, while looking through a limbo of a drawer wherein have
been cast from time to time a medley of maimed, half-soiled, abortive
things, too unfitted for the paradise of publication, and too good (so
my vanity will have it) for the damnation of the waste-paper basket,
I came across, at the very bottom, the manuscript of the preceding
autobiographical narrative, the last words of which I wrote at Mustapha
Superieur three years ago. At first I carried it about with me, not
caring to destroy it and not knowing what in the world to do with it
until, with the malice of inanimate things, the dirty dog's-eared bundle
took to haunting me, turning up continually in inconvenient places and
ever insistently demanding a new depository. At last I began to look
on it with loathing; and one day in a fit of inspiration, creating the
limbo aforesaid, I hurled the manuscript, as I thought, into everlasting
oblivion. I had no desire to carry on the record of my life any further,
and there, in limbo, it has remained for three years. But the other day
I took it out for reference; and now as I am holiday-making in a certain
little backwater of the world, where it is raining in a most unholiday
fashion, it occurs to me that, as everything has happened to me which is
likely to happen (Heaven knows I want no more excursions and alarums
in my life's drama), I may as well bring the narrative up to date. I
therefore take up the thread, so far as I can, from where I left off.

Lola, having nothing to do in Algiers, which had grown hateful to us
both, accompanied me to London. As, however, the weather was rough, and
she was a very bad sailor, I saw little of her on the voyage. For my own
part, I enjoyed the stormy days, the howling winds and the infuriated
waves dashing impotently over the steamer. They filled me with a sense
of conflict and of amusement. It is always good to see man tr