He shook his head.
“By whom, then?”
“By a woman with a clear little bird’s voice, with an angel and a devil in her dark beauty, a woman with the gesture of Paris—the grace, the diablerie of Paris.”
Light broke on me.
“By mademoiselle!” I exclaimed.
“Pardon,” he answered; “by madame.”
“She was married?”
“To the figure in the mirage; and she was content.”
“Content!” I cried.
“Content with her two little dark children dancing before her in the twilight, content when the figure of the mirage galloped at evening across the plain, shouting an Eastern love song, with a gazelle—instead of a woman—slung across his saddle-bow. Did I not say that, as the desert is the strangest thing in nature, so a woman is the strangest thing in human nature? Which heart is most mysterious?”