xLc/zes of Incense I83

“So—I am here, surprised in my love-affair by my lover’s father! I am put up on the shelf until he can come back to take me down; I who- oh, it is too exquisitely funnyl Sublimely ab- surd! Yes, yes”—she rose feverishly—-“I will go. Help me to dress. I will go at once.”

As though from out of nowhere, the negresses appeared with her clothes—her Dolly clothes— and under their deft fingers, she was swiftly ready for the flight.

But—just as she turned to leave, “Will not Barali beat you?” she asked Phaia curiously. “You must say I escaped while you were out of the room. You must say-—but who are you?” The eyes, once more pale grey, searched her.

“I am Barali’s Wife,” said the woman monot- onously; “his only wife. Of course he will beat me; are you a fool that you say ‘tell him this, tell him that’? Of course he will beat me, what of that? He is my master. When I was young and slim like you--but go, hurry! He may return at any moment. Kala! Narbi!”

The two negresses threw a thick black woollen cloth completely over Dorofée, and carried her out between them, as though she had been a bun- dle of stuff. The next thing she knew, she was standing outside the wall (the back wall) of Ba-