"Beef, plum pudding, fine fellers, rulers!"
"You mustn't laugh at my countrymen."
"Laugh—never! But—may I smile, just at one corner?"
He showed his rows of little, straight, white teeth, which looked strong enough to bite through a bar of iron.
"The Englishman rules us in Egypt. He keeps saying we are ruling, and he keeps on ruling us. And all the time he rules us, he despises us, madame. He thinks us silly children. But sometimes we smile at him, though of course he never smiles at us, for fear a smile from him should make us think we are not so far below him. It is very wrong of us, but somehow Allah permits us to smile. And then"—again he leaned forward, and his chair creaked in the darkness—"there are some Englishwomen who like to see us smile, some who even smile with us behind the Englishman's back."
He spoke calmly, with a certain subtle irony, but quite without any hint of bitterness, and in speaking the last words he slightly lowered his voice.
"Is it very wrong of them, madame? What do you say? Do you condemn them?"
She did not answer, but her mobile, painted lips quivered, as if she were trying to repress a smile and were not quite succeeding.
"If they smile, if they smile—isn't that a shame, madame?"
He was smiling into her eyes.