"But let it be quickly," he heard her whispering, after a while. Under his hand he felt a slow shiver moving over her arms. "Nekaf!" she breathed, so low that he could hardly hear. "I am afraid."
It was another night when the air was electric and men stirred in their sleep. Lieutenant Genet turned over in bed and stared at the moonlight streaming in through the window from the court of the caserne. In the moonlight stood Habib.
"What do you want?" Genet demanded, gruff with sleep.
"I came to you because you are my friend."
The other rubbed his eyes and peered through the window to mark the
Sudanese sentry standing awake beside his box at the gate.
"How did you get in?"
"I got in as I shall get out, not only from here, but from Kairwan, from Africa—because I am a man of decision."
"You are also, Habib, a skeleton. The moon shows through you. What have you been doing these weeks, these months, that you should be so shivery and so thin? Is it Old Africa gnawing at your bones? Or are you, perhaps, in love?"
"I am in love. Yes…. Ai, ai, Raoul habiby, if but thou couldst see her—the lotus bloom opening at dawn—the palm tree in a land of streams ——"
"Talk French!" Genet got his legs over the side of the bed and sat up. He passed a hand through his hair. "You are in love, then … and again I tell, you, for perhaps the twentieth time, Habib, that between a man and a woman in Islam there is no such thing as love."