Obedient to her command I entered the sitting-room where she was lying among the cushions of the yellow divan. The room was fitted up with a certain barbaric splendour, and the only touches of modern life to be seen were a bookcase of prettily bound books--red, green, and gold--set in a corner, the big Steinway Grand with its cabinets of music ready to hand, and the piano-stool upon which Alida often amused herself by spinning round and round, her tiny feet in their heelless slippers of golden brocade showing beneath the flutter of her light silk robe. As she lay on the divan, I could see that she wore under her dressing-gown a blouse of white silk flowered with gold, and an abundant pair of trousers of the same gathered close about her ankles by a button and a knot of golden cord. "I will speak," she cried. "This young man is worthy of my confidence, and you know it, Linn. If my father had wished me to go with Said Ali Mohammed, the slave prince, he would not have committed me to you. No, he would have sent me to nibble sweetmeats among the women behind the veil. But I am not a woman of the harem. I am free and French. Obey I shall not. I would rather die!" She suddenly threw off a slipper, reached out a bare brown foot exquisitely moulded, deftly picked up a letter from the floor with her toes, and handed it to me. It was in Arabic, and at the sight of the characters I shook my head. "My father could read it, but not I," I said mournfully, wishing that I had spent less time on Greek and Latin at the _Lycee_ St. Andre. "Then you must learn--you must--I shall teach you to speak, and your father shall drill you in the verbs. Listen, Auegoos Cawdori, I am not, save in love and in the kindness which not even my life could repay, the daughter of these best and dearest folk in the world. No, parents are not so kind as Keller and Linn. They are more selfish, though God forbid that I should speak so of my father. He was, ever since I can remember, a prisoner of war--even the great Emir Abd-el-Kader himself. I am the daughter of his one Queen, his first wife--no child of the 'Smala,' but a princess, the daughter of a princess. Abd-el-Kader, thinking himself near his end, committed me to the care of his old officer and his wife, instructing them that in all things I should be brought up as a maiden of the Franks. This they have done. You Linn, and you Keller, have kept watch about me day and night. The God who is the God of Jesus and of Mahomet reward you, as surely he will. I am a European girl in that which I have learned. I have chosen a profession in which I can be happy, here in this little town among the hills, till I seek larger fields and try my fate in other cities."