long, knotted under his hood in the Arab fashion.

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 passionately. 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 protégé. 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 "nigger" at him.