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AMANULLAH

" This," says Pierri, with terrific irony, " this is the
great hour in the Paghman day. There is a little life
in the gardens this afternoon. We will do the best we
can, in the circumstances, to amuse ourselves."

With the little Italian, this means finding out where
there are gathered the prettiest and most inviting-
looking nursemaids and female employees of the Govern-
ment- Having found them chattering in a little circle
near the bandstand, we sit on the grass and gaze at
them. Signor Pierri, undeterred by their obvious signs
of displeasure, and by their eventual removal to the
other side of the gardens, finds another group, and
concentrates on curves and contours once more. He is
irrepressible.

The fountains play, and the sunlight makes patterns
in the falling water. Strange children, black and brown
and yellow and pale, play in the dust. The chatter of
the nurses is shrill. Only is there silence when we are
near those groups of shrouded figures, walking mysteri-
ously along, their faces and figures enveloped by the
purdah robes.

There is a little crowd standing by the hard tennis
court—a recent innovation. We go there, Pierri
dragging his eyes unwillingly from a young Turkish
girl, with a Parisian figure and knee-high skirts, who
had just come into the garden.

" But she is lovely," protests Pierri. " She is divine.
I think I could make love to her very easily. For never
have I seen, even in Rome, a figure of such grace and
beauty. . . ."

Thus he commits treason against the women of his
own land, and knows it not, for Pierri's sex-hungry
brain is unable any more to make sane comparisons in
alien and unkind Afghanistan.

The fairy in question shows her obvious distaste with

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