“You never found out?”
“At Beni-Mora the women go veiled,” he said harshly.
Suddenly I realised the horror of the situation: the deserted husband living on with his child in the midst of the ordained and close secrecy of Beni-Mora, where many of the women never set foot out of doors, and those who do, unless they are the public dancers, are so heavily veiled that their features cannot be recognised.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I searched, as far as one can search in an Arab town, and found out nothing. I wanted to tear the veil from every woman in the place; and then I was sent away from Beni-Mora.”
“By whom?”
“The French authorities, my own countrymen,” he laughed bitterly. “To save me from getting myself murdered, m’sieu.”
“You would have been.”
“Why not? Then I came here to keep the inn for the diligence that carries the mails to the south, for I wouldn’t leave the country till——”
He paused.