I did not think, however, that my wisdom was a proper subject for discussion. I jerked back the conversation by asking Carlotta why she called Hamdi Effendi a shocking bad man. Her reply was startling. “My mother told me. She used to cry all day long. She was sorry she married Hamdi.” “Poor thing!” said I. “Did he ill-treat her?” “Oh, ye-es. She had small-pox, too, and she was no longer pretty, so Hamdi took other wives and she did not like them. They were so fat and cruel. She used to tell me I must kill myself before I married a Turk. Hamdi was going to make me marry Mohammed Ali one--two years ago; but he died. When I said I was so glad” (that seems to be her usual formula of acknowledgment of news relating to the disasters of her acquaintance), “Hamdi shut me up in a dark room. Then he said I must marry Mustapha. That is why I ran away with Harry. See? Oh, Hamdi is shocking bad.” From this and from other side-lights Carlotta has thrown on her upbringing, I can realise the poor, pretty weak-willed baby of a thing that was her mother, taking the line of least resistance, the husband dead and the babe in her womb, and entering the shelter offered by the amorous Turk. And I can picture her during the fourteen years of her imprisoned life, the disillusion, the heart-break, the despair. No wonder the invertebrate soul could do no more for her daughter than teach her monosyllabic English and the rudiments of reading and writing. Doubtless she babbled of western life with its freedom and joyousness for women; but four years have elapsed since her death, and her stories are only elusive memories in Carlotta’s mind. It is strange that among the deadening influences of the harem she has kept the hereditary alertness of the Englishwoman. She has a baby mouth, it is true; she pleads to you with the eyes of a dog; her pretty ways are those of a young child; but she has not the dull, soulless, sensual look of the pure-bred Turkish woman, such as I have seen in Cairo through the transparent veils. In them there is no attraction save of the flesh; and that only for the male who, deformity aside, reckons women as merely so much cubical content of animated matter placed by Allah at his disposal for the satisfaction of his desires and the procreation of children. I cannot for the life of me understand an Englishman falling in love with a Turkish woman. But I can quite understand him falling in love with Carlotta. The hereditary qualities are there, though they have been forced into the channel of sex, and become a sort of diabolical witchery whereof I am not quite sure whether she is conscious. For all that, I don’t think she can have a soul. I have made up my mind that she hasn’t, and I don’t like having my convictions disturbed.