eat it pin and all if it is not Fabergé." [Pg 99] Nadine laughed. "I can't imagine you married," she said. "You would make a very odd husband." "I would make a very odd anything," said he. "I don't find any recognized niche that really fits me, whereas almost everybody has some sort of niche. Indeed in the course of hundreds of years the niches, that is the manners of life, have been evolved to suit the sorts of types which nature produces. They live in rows and respect each other. But why it should be considered respectable to marry and have hosts of horrible children I cannot imagine. But it is, and I bow to the united strength of middle-class opinion. But neither you nor I are really made to live in rows. We are Bedouins by nature, and like to see a different sunrise every day. There shall be another tent for Antoinette." That admirable lady was just bringing them their coffee, and he spoke to her in French. "Antoinette, we start for the desert of Sahara to-morrow," he said. "We shall live in tents." Antoinette's plump face wrinkled itself up into enchanted smiles. "Bien, m'sieur," she said. "A quelle heure?" Nadine crunched up her coffee-sugar between her white teeth. "You are as little fitted to cross the desert of Sahara as any one I ever met," she said. [Pg 100] [Pg 100] "I should not cross it: I should—" "You would be miserable without your jade or your brocade and the sand would get into your hair, and you would have no bath," she said. "But every one who thinks has a Bedouin mind: it always wants me to go on and find new horizons and get nearer to blue mountains." "The matter with you is that you want and you don't know what you want," said he. Nadine nodded at him. Sometimes when she was with him she felt as if she was talking to a shrewd middle-aged man,
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