I have always felt rather proud of the way we handled ourselves in that year, keeping the entire respect of our Egyptians. It was not always so easy. It fell into my awkward hands to handle one rather violent love affair. A pretty and vivacious young girl had joined our party at the request of her brother: “Will you look after her?” The Egyptians were delighted with her, and she treated them as she might a group of American boys, could see no reason why she should not go out with them. Only our combined disapproval, our insistence that if she did she soon would be classed in the Quarter as little better than the gay little girls who swarmed about, and with whom we occasionally out of the corner of our eyes saw our Egyptians: she must not run that risk. But while that was managed the inevitable stir of youth could not be managed, and it was not long before I had one of the nicest of the boys begging me on his knees to let him pay his addresses to my little friend, insisting that he would marry her, never take another wife. He wept and pleaded, but I held my ground until finally the young girl who loved his suit but not the boy was safely on the ocean. A long time afterwards I had proof that we did look after ourselves. When a couple of our party were going to Italy one of these young men gave them a letter of introduction to an Egyptian friend in Milan. The letter was not presented, and not opened until two or three years later, when my friend showed me the postscript. It read: “Surtout soyez convenable avec ces dames.” After the Egyptians came our French professor, a woman of forty, buxom, competent, gay-hearted, an able teacher. I have never known man or woman more shrewd in gauging character or more expert in turning the qualities she found to her own advantage. If she respected or admired them she took no more than she gave—frequently, as in my case, much less. But if she found a pupil lazy or dishonest or stingy or rich and irresponsible, she took mercilessly. “Such people deserve nothing—nothing,” she declared once when I protested. She respected me because I worked, but she always told me frankly that although I read French easily and wrote it _pas mal_ I should always speak it with the “detestable” English accent. “No ear—too old.” However, I could be made more fluent, my vocabulary enlarged, my grammar perfected. And to that end she bent all her efforts, establishing several useful exchange relations. The chief of these was her most intimate friend, Monsieur X, a man who I suppose had been for many years her lover.