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"
I halted, and felt scared. Indeed, my knees began to give way of their
own mere motion; but reflection came to my aid. I was an Englishman,
and why, I asked myself, should I creep into the presence of some savage
woman as though I were a monkey in fact as well as in name? I would not
and could not do it, that is, unless I was absolutely sure that my life
or comfort depended upon it. If once I began to creep upon my knees I
should always have to do so, and it would be a patent acknowledgment of
inferiority. So, fortified by an insular prejudice against "kootooing,"
which has, like most of our so-called prejudices, a good deal of common
sense to recommend it, I marched in boldly after Billali. I found myself
in another apartment, considerably smaller than the anteroom, of which
the walls were entirely hung with rich-looking curtains of the same make
as those over the door, the work, as I subsequently discovered, of the
mutes who sat in the antechamber and wove them in strips, which were
afterwards sewn together.


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