A Son of the Sahara Part 7

"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.

Although Marie had taken on the youth as a business speculation, within a few days she loved him pa.s.sionately. She was loath to let her benefactor go, but all her wiles failed to keep him.

"When you're back in Africa you won't quite forget your little Marie who taught you to be a man, will you?" she whispered tearfully.

Her remarks made him laugh.

"I've had women of my own for at least a year before I met you," he replied.

It seemed to Marie she had never really known the youth who had come to her a savage and was leaving her looking a finished man of the world.

He never talked to her of himself or his affairs. Although kind and generous, he demanded swift obedience, and he treated her always as something infinitely inferior to himself.

"Say you love me," she pleaded. "That you'll think of me sometimes."

"Love!" he said contemptuously. "I don't love women. I have them for my pleasure. I'm not one of your white men who spend their days whining at some one woman's feet pleading for favours. Women to me are only toys. Good to look upon, if beautiful, but not so good as horses."

"Oh, you are cruel!" she said, weeping. "And I thought you loved me."

"It is the woman's place to love. There are other things in a man's life."

Marie realised she had never had any hold on her protege. She had been of use to him, and he had paid her well for it, and there, as far as he was concerned, the matter ended.

Being sensible, she sat up and dried her tears, gathering consolation from the fact that he had been a good speculation. There would be no immediate need to return to the florist's shop when he had gone. In fact, if she liked to sell the necklace, she could buy a business of her own.

"Shall you come to Paris again, Casim?" she asked.

"Oh yes, often. It's a good city, full of beautiful women who are easy to buy."

But he made a reservation to himself.

When he came again he would come under the name his mother used to call him--Raoul Le Breton, and he would come in European clothes. Then the English he hated would not be able to hurl that detestable word "n.i.g.g.e.r" at him.

CHAPTER VIII

In a select French boarding-school a girl sat reading a letter. She was about fifteen years old, a slender, lovely child, light and graceful, with a cascade of golden curls reaching to her waist, and wide, purple eyes. Her complexion was perfect. She had a vivid little red mouth, impulsive and generous, and a pink rose on each cheek.

On reading the letter, sorrow clouded her face. For it ran:--

"My Dear Little Pansy,

When you get this letter I shall be with your mother. I am leaving you the money she would not have. And it was worth having, you will agree, for it will bring you in about 60,000 a year. The only condition I make is that you take the name your mother refused, your own second name. And my one hope is that you will be more successful in love than I was.

Your affectionate 'grand-G.o.dfather,'

Henry Langham."

For some minutes Pansy sat brooding on her G.o.dfather's end. The poor old boy had been awfully ill for a long time, and now he was dead.