"'Where is that?'
"'From the tribe.'
"'What tribe?'
"'Mine.'
"'Why did you go away?'
"When she saw that I was not going to beat her, she grew rather bolder, and said in a low voice: "'I was obliged to do it.... I was forced to go, I could not stop in the house any longer.'
"I saw tears in her eyes, and immediately felt softened. I leaned over her, and when I turned round to sit down, I noticed Mohammed, who was watching us at a distance, and I went on, very gently:
"'Come, tell me why you ran away?'
"Then she told me, that for a long time in her Nomad's heart she had felt the irresistible desire to return to the tents, to lie, to run, to roll on the sand; to wander about the plains with the flocks, to feel nothing over her head, between the yellow stars in the sky and the blue stars in her face, except the thin, threadbare, patched stuff, through which she could see spots of fire in the sky, when she awoke during the night.
"She made me understand all that in such simple and powerful words, that I felt quite sure that she was not lying, and pitied her, and I asked her: