those who are older and wiser than I am. Everything in our lives
makes us women stealthy as cats. It is not our fault. At least, it is
not mine. Some women--some girls--may enjoy the excitement, but not I.
Perhaps I am different from others, because I have the blood of Europe
in my veins. My father's mother was Sicilian. My own mother was Spanish.
And he, my father, is an enlightened man, with broader views and more
knowledge of the world than most Caids of the south. They all pride
themselves on knowing a little French in these days, he tells me, and
some have even made visits to Paris once in their lives. But you know
already what he is."

"Yes, he is a magnificent man," Sanda agreed, "even greater than I
expected from what my father said of him."

She had met the Agha only once, for a ceremonious half-hour on the
evening of her arrival at his house, when he had begged permission as of
a visiting princess to see and welcome her; yet this punctiliousness was
not neglect, but Arab courtesy; and Ben Raana had talked to her of the
world in general and Paris in particular, in French, which, though
somewhat stilted and guttural, was curiously Parisian in wording and
expression. He was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, scarcely
darker in colour than many Frenchmen of the Midi, and marvellously
dignified, with his long black beard, his great, sad eyes whose
overhanging line of brow almost met above the eagle nose, and the
magnificent gray, silver embroidered burnous worn in the guest's honour.
He had appeared to Sanda years younger than the widowed Mabrouka; and
though she was a dark, withered likeness of him, it was not surprising
to learn that Lella Mabrouka was only a half-sister of the Agha, born of
an Arab mother.

"You know he has had but one wife, my own mother," Ourieda said proudly.
"That is considered almost a sin in our religion, yet he could never
bring himself to look with love on any woman, after her, nor to give her
a rival, even for the sake of having a son. I adore him for that--how
could I help it, since he says I am her image?--and for letting me learn
things Arab girls of the south are seldom taught, in order that I may
have something of her cleverness that held his love, as her beauty won
it. Yet, if he had married a second wife when my mother died, and she
had given him a son, my life would be happier now."

"How can that be?" asked Sanda. "I couldn't love my father in the way I
do if he