When Jean was leaving his mistress, he often used to meet this little creature. As soon as she saw him she tucked a piece of blue cotton cloth around her waist—this was her festal garment—and came towards him smiling. With soft, caressing inflections in her small, shrill, piping negress’s voice, with hanging head and the mincing airs of an enamoured ouistiti, she would say, _May man coper, souma toubab._ (Translated: Give me a copper, give me a sou, my white man.) That was the refrain of all the little girls in St Louis. Jean was used to it. When he was in a good temper and had a sou in his pocket, he would give it to Fatou-gaye. But that was not the most curious feature of the incident. What was out of the ordinary was Fatou-gaye’s behaviour. Instead of buying herself a piece of sugar, as other girls might have done, she would go and hide herself in a corner and set to work to sew very carefully into the sachets of her amulets the sous that she received from the spahi. XII One night in February a suspicion crossed Jean’s mind. Cora had asked him to leave at midnight, and just as he was going away, he thought he heard a sound of pacing in an adjoining room, as if someone were waiting there. He left at midnight, and then he returned with stealthy tread, stepping noiselessly over the sand. He climbed over a wall and on to a balcony, and looked into Cora’s room through the half-opened door leading on to the terrace. * * * * * Someone had taken Jean’s place by his mistress’s side—quite a young man, wearing the uniform of a naval officer. He had made himself at home, and was lounging in an arm chair with an air of disdainful ease. She was standing, and they were talking. At first it seemed to Jean that they were speaking an unknown tongue. The words were French, yet Jean could not understand them. These scraps of speech, which they interchanged so lightly, seemed to him mocking enigmas, perfectly meaningless for him. Cora too, was no longer the same; her expression had changed; a kind of smile hovered on her lips, a smile such as he remembered to have seen on the lips of a tall girl in a place of ill-repute. * * * * * Jean found himself trembling. He felt as if all the blood had left his head, and had poured back into his heart. He heard a roaring in his ears, like the noise of the sea; his eyes grew dim. He was ashamed of being there, yet he was determined to remain and to understand. He heard his name spoken; they were talking about him; he drew nearer, supporting himself against the wall, and he caught some words more distinctly spoken. “You are wrong, Cora,” said the young man in a very quiet voice, with an exasperating smile. “In the first place, he is a very handsome fellow, and then he, at all events, loves you.”