anywhere beyond this life, anything in
the nature of a heaven, it would seem inferior to this house, where I
can see you without possessing the love that you're capable of, and
hear your voice utter these incredible reassurances. Yes, my
conscience torments me, but not enough for that. While I may, I'll
hold on to you and to life, even when I feel sure that your thoughts
are turning elsewhere, and even if it comes to pass that your bodily
self must follow those thoughts. For as your pity returns, so must you
return to me. What a weapon I've found in pity! What a victory it
will bring me! Some other man may end by winning yourself; but I, as
long as I can keep my grip on life, will cling to this ghost of you!"

"Do you do this just in order to drive me mad?" she cried.

"No, you would understand if you could see into my soul. All its
surgings and clashings, its vortexes of pain and joy, the anguish that
somehow produces an audible beauty, and the ecstasies that are struck
mute by these fears! If I could explain all that, you would forgive me
for these moments that are beyond my control. But I can't explain it.
Not even in my music. One is always alone with one's heart."

Taking his twitching face between her hands, she showed him her eyes
filled with tears.

"But I do understand," she protested.

If she did, it was because she also was alone.

That night, as she was going to her own room, she saw Hamoud in the
upper corridor. Something forlorn and lost in his exotic aspect struck
through her sadness: she remembered how far from home this exile was,
how far removed also from the rank to which he had been born. She
hesitated, then asked remorsefully:

"Do you hate me, Hamoud?"

He turned pale, standing before her with the wall light shining upon
his face of a young caliph.

"I, madam?"

"Well, for what I've got you into: this service, which must distress
you every day. But what was there to do? It offered itself when
I--you, too, I suppose--could think of nothing else."

Hamoud-bin-Said, paler than ever, replied in Arabic:

"You are sorry for me because I have lost my heshma, my prestige? It
is part of the divine wisdom, the foreordained plan of my life. All
things happen for the best. The house is warm, so that one does not
feel the winter. There is food, so that one does not starve.
Therefore, my body is at peace----" He paused to compress his
carnelian lips, before concluding serenely,