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In a few brief disconnected sentences she told him all that she had concealed from him: Babi's spying on her, the ashes, the scene with Sami, the carnival, the public insult that was before her. As she told her story she was unable to distinguish between the figments of her fear and what she had any reason to fear.
She could see Babi's beaming face and her lips moving: Sami's wide hard mouth would stretch in a grin without opening: not a sound would come up from his throat: the house seemed to be lost in silence. Whenever Anna entered the kitchen, Sami would rise respectfully and remain standing, without a word, until she had gone out again.
She had taken it out of Christophe's room, and that very minute, she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten to take it back again; she had left it in her own room, where Babi's sharp eyes had seen it at once. The two gossips had immediately put two and two together. Anna did not flinch.
We cannot within the small compass of these lectures consider the excrescences of the normal Islam, the Shi'itic ultras, who venerated certain descendants of Mohammed as infallible rulers of the world, Ishma'ilites, Qarmatians, Assassins; nor the modern bastards of Islam, such as the Sheikhites, the Babi's, the Beha'is who have found some adherents in America and other sects, which indeed sprang up on Moslim soil, but deliberately turned to non-Mohammedan sources for their inspirations.
Christophe dined alone under Babi's supervision, and she bored him with her chatter, tried to make him talk, and protested such an extraordinary devotion to Anna, that, in spite of his readiness to believe in the good faith of men, Christophe became suspicious. He was counting on having a decisive interview with Anna that night. He could no more postpone matters than she.
Babi followed her mistress's eyes, gave an exaggerated smile, and explained: "The broom was broken: I gave it to Sami to mend." Anna did not take the trouble to point out the gross falsehood of the excuse: she did not seem even to hear it: she looked at Babi's work, made a few remarks, and went out again impassively. She heard a dry chuckle of laughter.
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