Larbi’s flute was very near.
“He is always playing,” she whispered.
“Who is he?”
“One of the gardeners. But he scarcely ever works. He is perpetually in love. That is why he plays.”
“Is that a love-tune then?” Androvsky asked.
“Yes. Do you think it sounds like one?”
“How should I know, Madame?”
He stood looking in the direction from which the music came, and now it seemed to hold him fascinated. After his question, which sounded to her almost childlike, and which she did not answer, Domini glanced at his attentive face, to which the green shadows lent a dimness that was mysterious, at his tall figure, which always suggested to her both weariness and strength, and remembered the passionate romance to whose existence she awoke when she first heard Larbi’s flute. It was as if a shutter, which had closed a window in the house of life, had been suddenly drawn away, giving to her eyes the horizon of a new world. Was that shutter now drawn back for him? No doubt the supposition was absurd. Men of his emotional and virile type have travelled far in that world, to her mysterious, ere they reach his length of years. What was extraordinary to her, in the thought of it alone, was doubtless quite ordinary to him, translated into act. Not ignorant, she was nevertheless a perfectly innocent woman, but her knowledge told her that no man of Androvsky’s strength, power and passion is innocent at Androvsky’s age. Yet his last dropped-out question was very deceptive. It had sounded absolutely natural and might have come from a boy’s pure lips. Again he made her wonder.
There was a garden bench close to where they were standing. “If you like to listen for a moment we might sit down,” she said.
He started.