But I was thinking just now of the curious tricks and uncertainties of my memory, and seeing the sheets, will record it here.  I have lately been trying to recall the name of a sister of mine—­some perfectly simple name, I know—­and the name of my old home in England:  and they have completely passed out of my cognizance, though she was my only sister, and we grew up closely together:  some quite simple name, I forget it now.  Yet I can’t say that my memory is bad:  there are things—­quite unexpected, unimportant things—­which come up in my mind with considerable clearness.  For instance, I remember to have met in Paris (I think), long before the poison-cloud, a little Brazilian boy of the colour of weak coffee-and-milk, of whom she now constantly reminds me.  He wore his hair short like a convict’s, so that one could spy the fish-white flesh beneath, and delighted to play solitary about the stairs of the hotel, dressed up in the white balloon-dress of a Pierrot.  I have the impression now that he must have had very large ears.  Clever as a flea he was, knowing five or six languages, as it were by nature, without having any suspicion that that was at all extraordinary.  She has that same light, unconscious, and nonchalant cleverness, and easy way of life.  It is little more than a year since I began to teach her, and already she can speak English with a quite considerable vocabulary, and perfect correctness (except that she does not pronounce the letter ’r’); she has also read, or rather devoured, a good many books; and can write, draw, and play the harp.  And all she does without effort:  rather with the flighty naturalness with which a bird takes to the wing.

What made me teach her to read was this:  One afternoon, fourteen months or so ago, I from the roof-kiosk saw her down at the lake-rim, a book in hand; and as she had seen me looking steadily at books, so she was looking steadily at it, with pathetic sideward head:  so that I burst into laughter, for I saw her clearly through the glass, and whether she is the simplest little fool, or the craftiest serpent that ever breathed, I am not yet sure.  If I thought that she has the least design upon my honour, it would be ill for her.

I went to Gallipoli for two days in the month of May, and brought back a very pretty little caique, a perfect slender crescent of the colour of the moon, though I had two days’ labour in cutting through bush-thicket for the passage of the motor in bringing it up to the lake.  It has pleased me to see her lie among the silk cushions of the middle, while I, paddling, taught her her first words and sentences between the hours of eight and ten in the evening, though later they became 10 A.M. to noon, when the reading began, we sitting on the palace-steps before the portal, her mouth invariably well covered with the yashmak, the lesson-book being a large-lettered old Bible found at her yali. Why she must needs wear the yashmak she has never once asked; and how much she divines, knows, or intends, I have no idea, continually questioning myself as to whether she is all simplicity, or all cunning.