“I cannot tell you what an immeasurable distance separated our two souls, although our hearts perhaps occasionally warmed towards each other.  She was something belonging to my house, she was part of my life, she had become a very agreeable, daily, regular requirement with me, to which I clung, and which the sensual man in me loved, that in me which was only eyes and sensuality.

“Well, one morning, Mohammed came into my room with a strange look on his face, that uneasy look of the Arabs, which resembles the furtive look of a cat, face to face with a dog, and when I noticed his expression, I said: 

“‘What is the matter, now?’

“‘Allouma has gone away.’

“I began to laugh, and said:—­’Where has she gone to?’

“‘Gone away altogether, mo’ssieuia!’

“‘What do you mean by gone away altogether; you are mad, my man.’

“‘No, mo’ssieuia.’

“‘Why has she gone away?  Just explain yourself; come!’

“He remained motionless, and evidently did not wish to speak, and then he had one of those explosions of Arab rage, which make us stop in streets in front of two demoniacs, whose oriental silence and gravity suddenly give place to the most violent gesticulations, and the most ferocious vociferations, and I gathered, amidst his shouts, that Allouma had run away with my shepherd, and when I had partially succeeded in calming him, I managed to extract the facts from him one by one.

“It was a long story, but at last I gathered that he had been watching my mistress, who used to meet a sort of vagabond whom my steward had hired the month before, behind the neighboring cactus woods, or in the ravine where the oleanders flourished.  The night before, Mohammed had seen her go out without seeing her return, and he repeated, in an exasperated manner:—­’Gone, mo’ssieuia; she has gone away!’

“I do not know why, but his conviction, the conviction that she had run away with this vagabond, laid hold of me irresistibly in a moment.  It was absurd, unlikely, and yet certain in virtue of that very unreasonableness, which constitutes female logic.

“Boiling over with indignation, I tried to recall the man’s features, and I suddenly remembered having seen him the previous week, standing on a mound amidst his flock, and watching me.  He was a tall Bedouin, the color of whose bare limbs was blended with that of his rags; he was a type of a barbarous brute, with high cheek bones, and a hooked nose, a retreating chin, thin legs, and a tall carcass in rags, with the shifty eyes of a jackal.

“I did not doubt for a moment that she had run away with that beggar.  Why?  Because she was Allouma, a daughter of the desert.  A girl from the pavement in Paris would have run away with my coachman, or some thief in the suburbs.

“‘Very well,’ I said to Mohammed.  Then I got up, opened my window, and began to draw in the stifling South wind, for the sirocco was blowing, and I thought to myself:—­