"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there. There's a little breeze from the sea."
"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.
When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to Constantine.
"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and extraordinary."
And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to death by their Arab husbands.
"C'est affreux!" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with twisting fingers.
"Les Arabes sont des monstres."
As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.
"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.
She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and instinctive disgust.