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 added in a very low tone, as if afraid that he might hear her, "it's nice to feel that Allah himself has failings."

But if she were ready to talk of her thoughts, there was a certain aloofness about her which exempted her personal affairs from discussion. Indeed I still had the impression of talking with the bronze lady of the fountain. This attitude of hers several times arrested on the tip of my tongue the sentence: "Why did you leave handsome Nouri Pasha?"

Just before I went away, she asked, à propos of nothing, "When do you leave for Paris?"

"At the end of September, or may be the first week in October."

"It is a very long way off," she murmured, half to herself.

"It will pass quickly enough."

She remained silent, in that silence which is full of whispers. One felt the talking of her thoughts.

After this first visit it became a habit of hers to send for me often to spend entire afternoons with her. She let me climb her trees and gather fruit for our afternoon meal, while the slaves drew cool water from the well.

When our friendship was a few weeks old I asked her: "Do you like living here all alone in this old house? Nouri Pasha has so many other houses, both on the island and on the Bosphorus,