in a more formal voice.

"Thank you," said Domini, who had already got up, moved by the examining
look cast at her.

There was nothing in it to resent, and she had not resented it, but it
had recalled her to the consciousness that they were utter strangers to
each other.

As they came out on the pale riband of sand which circled the little
room Domini said:

"How wild and extraordinary that tune is!"

"Larbi's. I suppose it is, but no African music seems strange to me. I
was born on my father's estate, near Tunis. He was a Sicilian; but came
to North Africa each winter. I have always heard the tomtoms and the
pipes, and I know nearly all the desert songs of the nomads."

"This is a love-song, isn't it?"

"Yes. Larbi is always in love, they tell me. Each new dancer catches him
in her net. Happy Larbi!"

"Because he can love so easily?"

"Or unlove so easily. Look at him, Madame."

At a little distance, under a big banana tree, and half hidden by clumps
of scarlet geraniums, Domini saw a huge and very ugly Arab, with an
almost black skin, squatting on his heels, with a long yellow and red
flute between his thick lips. His eyes were bent down, and he did not
see them, but went on busily playing, drawing from his flute coquettish
phrases with his big and bony fingers.

"And I pay him so much a week all the year round for doing that," the
Count said.

His grating voice sounded kind and amused. They walked on, and Larbi's
tune died gradually away.

"Somehow I can't be angry with the follies and vices of the Arabs," the
Count continued. "I love them as they are; idle, absurdly amorous,
quick to shed blood, gay as children, whimsical as--well, Madame, were I
talking to a man I might dare to say pretty women."

"Why not?"

"I will, then. I glory in their ingrained contempt of civilisation.
But I like them to say their prayers five times in the day as it is
commanded, and no Arab who touches alcohol in defiance of the Prophet's
law sets foot in my garden."

There was a touch of harshness in his voice as he said the last words,
the sound of the autocrat. Somehow Domini liked it. This man had
convictions, and strong ones. That was certain. There was something
oddly unconventional in him which something in her responded to. He was
perfectly polite, and yet, she was quite sure, absolutely careless of
opinion. Certainly he was very much a man.

"It is pleasant, too," he resumed, after a slight pause, "to be
sur