He lifted the glass to his lips and drained it.
“Are you a judge of wine?” added the Count. “That is made from my own grapes. I have vineyards near Tunis.”
“It is excellent,” said Androvsky.
Domini noticed that he spoke in a louder voice than usual, as if he were making a determined effort to throw off the uneasiness that evidently oppressed him. He ate heartily, choosing almost ostentatiously dishes in which there was meat. But everything that he did, even this eating of meat, gave her the impression that he was—subtly, how she did not know—defying not only the priest, but himself. Now and then she glanced across at him, and when she did so he was always looking away from her. After praising the wine he had relapsed into silence, and Count Anteoni—she thought moved by a very delicate sense of tact—did not directly address him again just then, but resumed the interrupted conversation about the Arabs, first explaining that the servants understood no French. He discussed them with a minute knowledge that evidently sprang from a very real affection, and presently she could not help alluding to this.
“I think you love the Arabs far more than any Europeans,” she said.
He fixed his bright eyes upon her, and she thought that just then they looked brighter than ever before.
“Why?” he asked quietly.
“Do you know the sound that comes into the voice of a lover of children when it speaks of a child?”
“Ah!—the note of a deep indulgence?”
“I hear it in yours whenever you speak of the Arabs.”