I think I always am with you." This must be so, as of late she has spoken little of her harem life; she talks chiefly of the small daily happenings, and already we have a store of common interests.

The present is her whole existence; the past but a confused dream.

The odd part of the matter is that she regards her position with me as a perfectly natural one.

No stray kitten adopted by a kind family could have less sense of obligation, or a greater faith in the serene ordering of the cosmos for its own private and peculiar comfort.

When I asked her a while ago what she would have done had I left her on the bench in the Embankment Gardens, she shrugged her shoulders and answered, as she had done before, that either she would have died or some other nice gentleman would have taken care of her.
"Do you think nice gentlemen go about London looking for homeless little girls ?" I asked on that occasion.
"All gentlemen like beautiful girls," she replied, which brought us to an old argument.
This afternoon, however, we did not argue.