What made me teach her to read was this: One afternoon, fourteen months
or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in
hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was
looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head: so that I burst
into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she
is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever
breathed, I am not yet sure. If I thought that she has the least design
upon my honour, it would be ill for her.

I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a
very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of
the moon, though I had two days' labour in cutting through bush-thicket
for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake. It has
pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while
I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours
of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 A.M. to
noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the
portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the
lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. _Why_
she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much
she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning
myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning.

That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I
cannot doubt: for that I have a long beard, and she none at all, is
among the most patent of facts.

* * * * *

I have thought that a certain _Western-ness_--a growing modernity of