'No foolishness, dear child,' I said gently. 'You don't know perhaps that I am ruined. Yes, completely: I don't even know how I am going to pay for your complexion cream!'
"'Ah!' she sighed.
"She added, however, 'And ... the child?'
"'What child?'
"'Our child ... our child.'
"'Ah! That is so. Why, you will have to put it down to profit and loss. I am even convinced that Sheik Ahmed will find that it resembles him.'
"'You can turn everything into a joke,' she said between laughing and crying.
"The next morning, at the same hour, the Marseilles express carried away the five Tuareg and Clémentine. The young woman, radiant, was leaning on the arm of Sheik Ahmed, who was beside himself with joy.
"'Have you many shops in your capital?' she asked him languidly.
"And he, smiling broadly under his veil, replied: