ground. When she was in the desert, she used to milk the camels, serve
her husband, prepare his food, wash his hands, face, and feet, and stood
and waited on him while he ate, like any Arab woman, and gloried in so
doing. But at Damascus she led a semi-European life. She blackened her
eyes with kohl, and lived in a curiously untidy manner. But otherwise
she was not in the least extraordinary at Damascus. But what was
incomprehensible to me was how she could have given up all she had in
England to live with that dirty little black--or nearly so--husband. I
could understand her leaving a coarse, cruel husband, much older than
herself, whom she never loved (every woman has not the strength of mind
and the pride to stand by what she has done); I could understand her
running away with Schwartzenburg; but the contact with that black
skin I could not understand. Her Shaykh was very dark--darker than a
Persian, and much darker than an Arab generally is. All the same, he
was a very intelligent and charming man in any light but as a husband.
That made me shudder. It was curious how she had retained the charming
manner, the soft voice, and all the graces of her youth. You would have
known her at once to be an English lady, well born and bred, and she was
delighted to greet in me one of her own order. We became great friends,
and she dictated to me the whole of her biography, and most romantic and
interesting it is. I took a great interest in the poor thing. She was
devoted to her Shaykh, whereat I marvelled greatly. Gossip said that he
had other wives, but she assured me that he had not, and that both her
brother Lord Digby and the British Consul required a legal and official
statement to that effect before they were married. She appeared to be
quite foolishly in love with him (and I fully comprehend any amount of
sacrifice for the man one loves--the greater the better), though the
object of her devotion astonished me. Her eyes often used to fill with
tears when talking of England, her people, and old times; and when we
became more intimate, she spoke to me of every detail of her erring but