rate, do not buzz against their Creator, like midges
raging at the sun in whose beams they are dancing."

"No," assented the priest. "At least in that respect they are superior
to many who call themselves Christians. Their pride is immense, but it
never makes itself ridiculous."

"You mean by trying to defy the Divine Will?" said Domini.

"Exactly, Mademoiselle."

She thought of her dead father.

The servants stole round the table, handing various dishes noiselessly.
One of them, at this moment, poured red wine into Androvsky's glass. He
uttered a low exclamation that sounded like the beginning of a protest
hastily checked.

"You prefer white wine?" said Count Anteoni.

"No, thank you, Monsieur."

He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it.

"Are you a judge of wine?" added the Count. "That is made from my own
grapes. I have vineyards near Tunis."

"It is excellent," said Androvsky.

Domini noticed that he spoke in a louder voice than usual, as if he were
making a determined effort to throw off the uneasiness that evidently
oppressed him. He ate heartily, choosing almost ostentatiously dishes
in which there was meat. But everything that he did, even this eating
of meat, gave her the impression that he was--subtly, how she did not
know--defying not only the priest, but himself. Now and then she glanced
across at him, and when she did so he was always looking away from
her. After praising the wine he had relapsed into silence, and Count
Anteoni--she thought moved by a very delicate sense of tact--did not
directly address him again just then, but resumed the interrupted
conversation about the Arabs, first explaining that the servants
understood no French. He discussed them with a minute knowledge that
evidently sprang from a very real affection, and presently she could not
help alluding to this.

"I think you love the Arabs far more than any Europeans," she said.

He fixed his bright eyes upon her, and she thought that just then they
looked brighter than ever before.

"Why?" he asked quietly.

"Do you know the sound that comes into the voice of a lover of children
when it speaks of a child?"

"Ah!--the note of a deep indulgence?"

"I hear it in yours whenever you speak of the Arabs."

She spoke half jestingly. For a moment he did not reply. Then he said to
the priest:

"You have lived long in Africa, Father. Have not you something of the
same feeling towards these children of the sun?"

"Yes