“Don’t think I do not realise that you have worked,” she went on after a pause. “You told me how you always cultivated the land yourself, even when you were still a boy, that you directed the Spanish labourers in the vineyards, that—you have earned a long holiday. But should it last for ever?”
“You are right. Well, let us take an oasis; let us become palm gardeners like that Frenchman at Meskoutine.”
“And build ourselves an African house, white, with a terrace roof.”
“And sell our dates. We can give employment to the Arabs. We can choose the poorest. We can improve their lives. After all, if we owe a debt to anyone it is to them, to the desert. Let us pay our debt to the desert men and live in the desert.”
“It would be an ideal life,” she said with her eyes shining on his.
“And a possible life. Let us live it. I could not bear to leave the desert. Where should we go?”
“Where should we go!” she repeated.
She was still looking at him, but now the expression of her eyes had quite changed. They had become grave, and examined him seriously with a sort of deep inquiry. He sat upon the Arab rug, leaning his back against the wall of the traveller’s house.
“Why do you look at me like that, Domini?” he asked with a sudden stirring of something that was like uneasiness.
“I! I was wondering what you would like, what other life would suit you.”