Page 99 - Malay sketches

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THE ETERNAL FEMININE

Le bonheur de saigner sur le coeur
d'un ami
PAUL VERLAINI

was a woman of Kelantan named Siti
THERE ; she was born of the people, neither
Maamih
good nor beautiful, nor attractive, nor even young,
as youth goes in the East, but she had chosen to
herself to a white man whom I will call Grant.
ally
I know but that he had
nothing of these two,
work far away in a Malay jungle and she shared
his loneliness, herself a stranger in that country.
It was apparently an arrangement formed for mutual
advantage, like many others of a more permanent
character. If the connection began without any
semblance of romance, it more than satisfied the
expectations of the contracting parties, and when
the moment of trial came the highest affection and
the most sacred bond could hardly have suggested
a sacrifice than this woman offered.
greater
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