Why should the East be more mysterious than
the West, or North, or South, except that women were shut up in harems
and wore veils if they stirred out of doors? Such customs could scarcely
make a whole country mysterious. But now, though he had not yet landed,
he knew that he would be compelled to acknowledge the indefinable
mystery at which he had sneered. Already he fancied an elusive
influence, like the touch of a ghost. It was in the pulsing azure of the
sky; in the wild forms of the Atlas and far Kabyle mountains stretching
into vague, pale distances; in the ivory white of the low-domed roofs
that gleamed against the vivid green hill of the Sahel, like pearls on a
veiled woman's breast.
"Is it what you thought it would be?" Victoria inquired in her turn.
"I hadn't thought much about it," Stephen had to confess, fearing she
would consider such indifference uninteresting. He did not add what
remained of the truth, that he had thought of Algiers as a refuge from
what had become disagreeable, rather than as a beautiful place which he
wished to see for its own sake. "I'd made no picture in my mind. You
know a lot more about it all than I do, though you've lived so far away,
and I within a distance of forty-eight hours."
"That great copper-coloured church high on the hill is Notre Dame
d'Afrique," said the girl. "She's like a dark sister of Notre Dame de la
Garde, who watches over Marseilles, isn't she? I think I could love her,
though she's ugly, really.
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