He dropped his hands quickly. “Oh, no, it wasn’t——”
He broke off the sentence and was silent. Domini stood still, drew a long breath and laughed. She still felt angry and laughed to control herself. Unless she could be amused at this episode she knew that she was capable of going back to the door of the café and hitting out right and left at the men who had nearly suffocated her. Any violence done to her body, even an unintentional push against her in the street—if there was real force in it—seemed to let loose a devil in her, such a devil as ought surely only to dwell inside a man.
“What people!” she said. “What wild creatures!”
She laughed again. The patrol pushed its way roughly in at the doorway.
“The Arabs are always like that, Madame.”
She looked at him, then she said, abruptly:
“Do you speak English?”
Her companion hesitated. It was perfectly obvious to her that he was considering whether he should answer “Yes” or “No.” Such hesitation about such a matter was very strange. At last he said, but still in French:
“Yes.”
And directly he had said it she saw by his face that he wished he had said “No.”