He learnt ball-room dancing, methodically with a teacher, and then danced whenever possible, but always as if he was on parade. He frequented the drawing-rooms and tried to become the society gallant, making love to the ladies of Sofia, but they found him excessively gauche. He was a smartly turned-out and wellset-up Turkish officer and that was all. They had no liking for Turks, at any time, and Mustafa Kemal was neither good-looking nor attractive. His manners were crude. Either he stalked stiffly about with his face set and grey, or he talked abruptly. He had no small talk, no easy gallantry or ready flattery. He understood nothing of the pleasant play of light flirtation. He bluntly demanded that each lady should bed with him; if she refused he ceased to be interested, but, as bluntly, asked another. For a short time he was half in love with a fluffy-haired pretty girl, the daughter of General Kovatchev, but she gave him the cold shoulder. Very soon the ladies found him an uncouth fellow, the traditional Tartar in contrast to Fethi, the suave, polite, easygoing
Turk. They laughed at his dancing and his attempts to learn the drawing-room manner. They found him a prodigious bore and forgot him.
And Mustafa Kemal, touchy and sensitive, became more lofty and aloof than ever. He began to hate the society women with their soft ways and their chatter, who would not make love wholeheartedly and yet teased and tormented his desire, who sneered at him, and who would not make a hero of him.
With men-and especially men who were deferential-and with the loose women of the capital, Mustafa Kemal was far more at ease. With these, in the cafes and the brothels, he drank and revelled night after night far into the dawn. He gambled and diced for hours against anyone who would sit