It had been a farmhouse once, and he said there were 'good
teachers and good air.' I can hear him saying it now. It was easy to
persuade her; and she engaged rooms at a hotel in the town near by,
which was called Potterston, after Mr. Potter's grandfather. By and by
they were married, but their marriage made no difference to me. It
wasn't a bad little old-fashioned school, and I was as happy as I could
be anywhere, parted from Saidee. There was an attic where I used to be
allowed to sit on Saturdays, and think thoughts, and write letters to my
sister; and there was one corner, where the sunlight came in through a
tiny window shaped like a crescent, without any glass, which I named
Algiers. I played that I went there to visit Saidee in the old Arab
palace she wrote me about. It was a splendid play--but I felt lonely
when I stopped playing it. I used to dance there, too, very softly in
stockinged feet, so nobody could hear--dances she and I made up together
out of stories she used to tell me. The Shadow Dance and the Statue
Dance which you saw, came out of those stories, and there are more you
didn't see, which I do sometimes--a butterfly dance, the dance of the
wheat, and two of the East, which were in stories she told me after we
knew Cassim ben Halim. They are the dance of the smoke wreath, and the
dance of the jewel-and-the-rose. I could dance quite well even in those
days, because I loved doing it.
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