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Updated: June 9, 2025
And she stood looking down at her immemorial companion with a sort of helpless wonder, as if all their years of familiarity had not made her perversities, on occasion, any more easy to follow. "I know what I'm about. I'm not losing my mind. I daresay you would like to think so," said Miss Bordereau with a cynical little sigh. "I don't suppose you came out here yourself.
"Well then, how much will you give for six months?" I was on the point of exclaiming and the air of excruciation in my face would have denoted a moral face "Don't, Juliana; for HIS sake, don't!" But I controlled myself and asked less passionately: "Why should I remain so long as that?" "I thought you liked it," said Miss Bordereau with her shriveled dignity. "So I thought I should."
I hurried downstairs with her, and on the way she told me that an hour after I quitted them in the afternoon Miss Bordereau had had an attack of "oppression," a terrible difficulty in breathing. This had subsided but had left her so exhausted that she did not come up: she seemed all gone.
Impressionistic realism, I suppose they would call it, scrawled down by an excitable female journalist who, I am sorry to say, has created quite a rage for European and American lady tourists among these Arabs, to the great discredit of our civilization. Read them, Monsieur, as a warning example, and perhaps you will give me your Bordereau instead; there may be something in it, after all."
I gladly make the exchange, and regard the transaction in the light of an omen, an epoch. I have been craving for something different from the facts of Bordereau, who has been my companion all these days.
I inquired who her aunt might be and she answered, "Why, Miss Bordereau!" with an air of surprise, as if I might have been expected to know. There were contradictions like this in Tita Bordereau which, as I observed later, contributed to make her an odd and affecting person.
I had known many of my country-people in Europe and was familiar with the strange ways they were liable to take up there; but the Misses Bordereau formed altogether a new type of the American absentee. Indeed it was plain that the American name had ceased to have any application to them I had seen this in the ten minutes I spent in the old woman's room.
To tease him, I quote the authority of Bordereau, who says that there are practically no Arabs in Gafsa; that the customs of this town are one thing and those of the Arabs another, unless he applies the word Arab to all the Mohammedan races of these parts. The objection is brushed aside; one word is as good as another, n'est-ce-pas?
It was hard to remove my eyes from the dull mahogany front when I reflected that a simple panel divided me from the goal of my hopes; but I remembered my prudence and with an effort took leave of Miss Bordereau. To make the effort graceful I said to her that I should certainly bring her an opinion about the little picture. "The little picture?" Miss Tita asked, surprised.
When a page of the Bordereau was first thrown upon the screen side by side with the authentic handwriting of the prisoner at Devil's Island, I knew that I had my work cut out for me, for there were murmurs everywhere of "Identical!" "Damnatory!" "That settles the whole question," and so on. The mood of the audience was not to be doubted for an instant, but I knew my case and I was confident.
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