a privileged relative. The slightest recognition of a man
out-of-doors--or indeed anywhere--would be to proclaim herself one of
that degraded outcaste class as common in Moorish towns as in Europe.

Of companionship in wedlock the Moor has no conception, and his ideas
of love are those of lust. Though matrimony is considered by the
Muslim doctors as "half of Islám," its value in their eyes is purely
as a legalization of license by the substitution of polygamy for
polyandry. Slavishly bound to the observance of wearisome customs,
immured in a windowless house with only the roof for a promenade,
seldom permitted outside the door, and then most carefully wrapped in
a blanket till quite unrecognizable, the life of a Moorish woman, from
the time she has first been caught admiring herself in a mirror, is
that of a bird encaged. Lest she might grow content with such a lot,
she has before her eyes from infancy the jealousies and rivalries of
her father's wives and concubines, and is early initiated into the
disgusting and unutterable practices employed to gain the favour of
their lord. Her one thought from childhood is man, and distance lends
enchantment. A word, the interchange of a look, with a man is sought
for by the Moorish maiden more than are the sighs and glances of a
coy brunette by a Spaniard. Nothing short of the unexpurgated Arabian
Nights' Entertainments can convey an adequate idea of what goes on
within those whited sepulchres, the broad, blank walls of Moorish
towns. A word with the mason who comes to repair the roof, or even a
peep at the men at work on the building over the way, on whose account
the roof promenade is forbidden, is eagerly related and expatiated
on. In short, all the training a Moorish woman receives is sensual,
a training which of itself necessitates most rigorous, though often
unavailing, seclusion.