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 read the Koran, where I know it pretty well, and some poetry."

"Then you do read poetry?"

"Not now; for I know my poems by heart."

"I stared at her in amazement. You don't know by heart all the poems in the world, do you?"

"No, unless all the poems in the world are ten," she answered smiling.

I pondered a minute over her state of mind. "I think I should go mad unless I had books to read," I observed.

"What is in them?" she asked, more simply than I had ever asked about anything in my life. At that moment she was a pure Asiatic, descended from a thousand Asiatic ancestors, from whom the books have kept their secrets. "What is in them?" she repeated. "Aren't they all alike?"

"Each book is the history of a human being, or of a whole race; and sometimes it takes books and books to tell you about the one or the other."

"How many have you read in all?"

"Thousands," I answered vaingloriously.

"And do you love them all?"

I shook my head. "No, there are horrid books, as there are horrid people; but most of them are beautiful, full of the lives and stories of people who have lived and dreamed and done things in the world."

"Tell me some of them."