Zeyneb.
CHAPTER XV
DREAMS AND REALITIES
Hendaye, July 1907.
What a relief! What a heart-felt relief to leave Paris! Paris with its noise and clamour and perpetual and useless movement! Paris which is so different from what I expected!
We have had in Paris what you English people call a “season,” and I shall require many months of complete rest, to get over the effects of that awful modern whirlwind.
What an exhausting life! What unnecessary labour! And what a contrast to our calm harem existence away yonder. I think—yes, I almost think I have had enough of the West now, and want to return to the East, just to get back the old experience of calm.
Picture to yourself the number of new faces we have seen in six weeks. What a collection of women—chattering, irritating, inquisitive, demonstrative, and obliging women, who invite you again and again, and when you do go to their receptions you get nothing for your trouble but crowding and pushing.
All the men and women in Paris are of uncertain years. The pale girl who serves the tea might be of any age from fifteen to thirty, and the men with the well-trimmed fingers and timid manners are certainly not sixty, but they might be anything up to forty.