“Will you allow me to take you through the rest of the garden, Madame?” he added in a more formal voice.
“Thank you,” said Domini, who had already got up, moved by the examining look cast at her.
There was nothing in it to resent, and she had not resented it, but it had recalled her to the consciousness that they were utter strangers to each other.
As they came out on the pale riband of sand which circled the little room Domini said:
“How wild and extraordinary that tune is!”
“Larbi’s. I suppose it is, but no African music seems strange to me. I was born on my father’s estate, near Tunis. He was a Sicilian; but came to North Africa each winter. I have always heard the tomtoms and the pipes, and I know nearly all the desert songs of the nomads.”
“This is a love-song, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Larbi is always in love, they tell me. Each new dancer catches him in her net. Happy Larbi!”
“Because he can love so easily?”
“Or unlove so easily. Look at him, Madame.”