“To-night, Madame,” Batouch said proudly, “I am going to tell stories from the Thousand and One Nights. I am going to tell the story of the young Prince of the Indies, and the story of Ganem, the Slave of Love. It is not often that in Ain-la-Hammam a poet—”
“No, indeed. Go to them, Batouch. They must be impatient for you.”
Batouch smiled broadly.
“Madame begins to understand the Arabs,” he rejoined. “Madame will soon be as the Arabs.”
“Go, Batouch. Look—they are longing for you.”
She pointed to the desert men, who were gesticulating and gazing towards the tents.
“It is better so, Madame,” he answered. “They know that I am here only for one night, and they are eager as the hungry jackal is eager for food among the yellow dunes of the sand.”
He threw his burnous over his shoulder and moved away smiling, and murmuring in a luscious voice the first words of Ganem, the Slave of Love.
“Let us go now, Boris,” Domini said.
He got up at once from the table, and they walked together round the bordj.