Part 7 (1/2)
”You are the limit! I shouldn't quarrel with the good things of this life even if I were a Mohammedan.”
”By my religion women have no souls,” he replied in a voice that spoke volumes.
But Marie was not easily abashed.
”The lack of a soul doesn't trouble me in the least,” she responded lightly. ”A pretty body is of greater use to a woman any day. Do you think I'm pretty, Casim?” she finished coquettishly.
”I shouldn't be with you unless you were,” he replied, as if her question were an insult to his taste.
For some minutes there was silence. As the girl sipped her champagne she watched her escort in a calculating manner.
”You've got lots of money, haven't you?” she said presently.
”Not as much as I intend to have,” he replied.
”But enough to buy me a new frock?” she questioned.
”Fifty, if you want them.”
Marie threw her arms around his neck.
”You nice boy!” she cried, kissing him soundly.
He resented her attentions, removing her arms in a none too gentle manner.
”I object to such displays of affection in public,” he said, with an air of ruffled dignity.
”Come home with me, then,” she suggested.
”Home” to Marie was an attic in a poor street. There Casim Ammeh went, not as a victim to her charms, as she imagined, but seeing in her a means to his own end.
The next morning as he sat at breakfast with the girl--a meagre repast of black coffee and rolls--from somewhere out of his voluminous robes he produced a string of pearls and dangled it before his hostess.
Marie looked at them, her mouth round with surprise, for they were real and worth at least ten thousand francs.
”If I give you these, Marie, will you teach me to become a Frenchman?”
he asked.
”Won't I just!” she cried enthusiastically, and without hesitation continued: ”First of all we must get an apartment. And, _mon Dieu!_ yes, you must cut your hair short.”
The youth wore his hair long, knotted under his hood in the Arab fas.h.i.+on.
It was three months before Casim Ammeh left Paris. And he left it in a correctly cut English suit and with his smooth, black hair brushed back over his head. In the spick-and-span young man it would have been difficult to recognise the barbaric youth who had come there knowing nothing of civilised life except what his mother had told him and what he had seen in St. Louis; and, what was more, he felt at ease in his new garments, in spite of having worn burnoose and hood all his life.
The day before he left, Marie sat with him in the _salon_ of the pretty flat they had occupied since the day they struck their bargain. And she looked very different, too.
Her evening frock was no longer of shabby black. It was one of the several elaborate gowns she now possessed, thanks to the young man.
And she no longer wore a string of coral beads about her pretty throat, but the pearl necklace.