with its Arab characters, its
African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had
read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and
instinctive disgust.

The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders.

"_Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!_"

"Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of
eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white
parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong
antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans
really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because
they are picturesque."

"Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they
call color drives them quite mad!"

"Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly.

"It is all the same. _Ils sont tous des monstres affreux._"

"Tst! Tst! Tst!"

The voice of Jacques came up from the garden.

"What is it?"

"Tst! Tst!"

They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming
and of native music.

"I must go! I must hear, see!"

The composer cried out.

"Come with me, my Susan, and you, Max, old person!"

There was a patter of running feet, a sound of full-throated laughter
from Elliot, and presently silence but for the now very distant music.

"He is a baby," observed Madame Sennier.

She yawned, slightly blowing out her veil.

"How hot it is!"

Pierre came out carrying a tray on which were some of the famous fruit
syrups, iced lemonade, cakes, and bonbons.

"These are the things your husband loves," said Charmian, pointing to
the syrups. "I wonder--" She paused. "Did you make as great friends with
my husband as I have made with yours?" she asked lightly.

Madame Sennier spread out her hands, which were encased in thick white
kid gloves sewn with black. Her amazingly thin figure, which made
ignorant people wonder whether she possessed the physical mechanism
declared by anatomists to be necessary to human life, somehow proclaimed
a negative.

"My husband opens his door, the window too. Yours keeps his door shut
and the blinds over the window. Jacques gives all, like a child. Your
husband seems to give sometimes; but he really gives nothing."

"Of course, the English temperament is very different from the French,"
said Charmian, in a constrained voice.

"Very!" said Mrs. Shiffney.

Was she smiling behind the veil?

"You ought to go to Ame