“I suppose you’re right,” Owen answered, “I suppose you’re right.”

And they stopped to look at an Arab town; some of it was in the plain below, some of it ran up the steep hillside, on the summit of which was a ruined mosque.

“Why did they choose to build up such a steep hillside?”

“The oasis is limited, and the plain is devoted to orchards.  Look at the village!  If you were to visit their town, you would not find a street in which a camel could turn round, hardly any windows, and the doors always half closed.  They are still suspicious of us and anxious to avoid our inquisition.  Yes, that is the characteristic of the Arab, to conceal himself; and his wife, and his business from us.”

“One can sympathise with the desire to avoid inquisition, and notwithstanding the genius of your race—­no one is more sympathetic to you than I am—­yet it is impossible not to see that your fault is red tapeism, and that is what the Arab hates.  You see I understand.”

“I don’t think I am unsympathetic, and the Arabs don’t think it.  Perhaps there is no man in Africa who can travel as securely as I can—­even in the Soudan I should be well received—­and what other European could say as much?  There must be something of the Arab in me, otherwise I shouldn’t have lived amongst them so long, nor should I speak Arabic as easily as I do, nor should I look—­remember, you thought I was an Arab.”

“Yes, at first sight.”

The admission was given somewhat unwillingly, not because Owen saw Beclere differently, he still saw an Arab exterior, but he had begun to recognise him as a Frenchman.  Race characteristics are generally imaginary; there are, shall we say, twenty millions of Frenchmen in France, and every one is different; how therefore is it possible to speak of race characteristics?  Still, if one may differentiate at all between the French and English races (but is there a French and English race?) we know there is a negro race because it is black—­ however, if there be any difference between England and France, the difference is that France is more inclined to pedantry than England.  If one admits any race difference, one may admit this one; and, with such thoughts in his mind, Owen began to perceive Beclere as the typical French pedagogue, a clever man, one who if he had remained in Paris would have become un membre de l’Institut.

Beclere, un membre de l’Institut, talking to the beautiful girl whom Owen had seen that morning!  Owen smiled a little under his moustache, and, as there was plenty of time for meditation while waiting for Tahar to return from Ain Mahdy, he spent a great deal of time wondering if any sensual relations existed between Beclere and this girl.  Beclere as a lover appeared to him anomalous and disparate—­that is how Beclere would word it himself, but these pedants were very often serious sensualists.  We easily associate conventional morality with red-tapeism, for it seems impossible to believe that the stodgy girl who spends her morning in the British Museum working at the higher mathematics or Sanscrit is likely to spend her afternoon in bed, yet this is what happens frequently; the real sensualist is the pedant; “and, if one wants love, the real genuine article,” whispered a thought, “one must seek it among clergymen’s daughters.”