As the two men sat talking, a soft voice said unexpectedly:
"Oh, Raoul, I'd no idea you had a visitor!"
All at once a girl had appeared in the entrance of the tent She was small and slim, with two thick plaits of golden-brown hair reaching to her knees; a beautiful girl of about eighteen, with wide grey eyes and a creamy white skin.
Her voice brought Le Breton to his feet.
"What is it, Annette?" he asked.
"I thought——I'll come later," she said; the blushes mounting to her cheeks.
The Sultan Casim Ammeh got to his feet also. Not out of any sense of deference; he had none where women were concerned, but drawn there by the beauty of the girl.
"You needn't mind what you say in front of this man," her husband remarked. "He doesn't understand a word of French.
"Ill tell you later, Raoul, when there's nobody here." She would have gone, but Le Breton called her forward and, in Arabic, introduced her to his visitor.
Annette bowed to the lean, lithe, brown man in the white burnoose, and her eyes dropped under the fierce admiration in his.