Even when I found that he
meant to make me lead the life of an Arab woman, shut up and veiled, I
liked him too well to mind much. He put it in such a romantic way,
telling me how he worshipped me, how mad with jealousy he was even to
think of other men seeing my face, and falling in love with it. He
thought every one must fall in love! All girls like men to be
jealous--till they find out how sordid jealousy can be. And I was so
young--a child. I felt as if I were living in a wonderful Eastern poem.
Cassim used to give me the most gorgeous presents, and our house in
Algiers was beautiful. My garden was a dream--and how he made love to me
in it! Besides, I was allowed to go out, veiled. It was rather fun being
veiled--in those days, I thought so. It made me feel mysterious, as if
life were a masquerade ball. And the Arab women Cassim let me know--a
very few, wives and sisters of his friends--envied me immensely. I loved
that--I was so silly. And they flattered me, asking about my life in
Europe. I was like a fairy princess among them, until--one day--a woman
told me a thing about Cassim. She told me because she was spiteful and
wanted to make me miserable, of course, for I found out afterwards she'd
been expressly forbidden to speak, on account of my 'prejudices'--they'd
all been forbidden. I wouldn't believe at first,--but it was true--the
others couldn't deny it. And to prove what she said, the woman took me
to see the boy, who was with his grandmother--an aunt of Maieddine's,
dead now.
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