“Yes. Thank you.”
When they were sitting side by side, closely guarded by the gigantic fig and chestnut trees which grew in this part of the garden, he added:
“Whom does he love?”
“No doubt one of those native women whom you consider utterly without attraction,” she answered with a faint touch of malice which made him redden.
“But you come here every day?” he said.
“I!”
“Yes. Has he ever seen you?”
“Larbi? Often. What has that to do with it?”
He did not reply.
Odd and disconnected as Larbi’s melodies were, they created an atmosphere of wild tenderness. Spontaneously they bubbled up out of the heart of the Eastern world and, when the player was invisible as now, suggested an ebon faun couched in hot sand at the foot of a palm tree and making music to listening sunbeams and amorous spirits of the waste.