ten in the evening
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 . That she is conscious of some profound difference in our organisation I can not doubt : for that I have a long beard , and she none at all , is among the most patent of facts . * * * * * I have thought that a certain _ Western-ness _ -- a growing modernity of tone -- may be the result , as far as I am concerned , of her presence with me ?