“You are so restful,” she laughed as we moved off.
Then she scanned my face and said falteringly. “How thin and worn you look! Are you worse?”
“If you ask me such questions,” said I, “I'll leave you with the luggage in charge of Rogers. I am in resplendent health.”
She murmured that she wished she could believe me, and took my arm as we walked down the jetty to the waiting cab.
“It's good to hear your voice again,” I said. “It's a lazy voice and fits in with the lazy South.” I pointed to the burnous-enveloped Arabs sleeping on the parapet. “It's out of place in Cadogan Gardens.”
She laughed her low, rippling laugh. It was music very pleasant to hear after the somewhat shrill cachinnation of the Misses Bostock of South Shields. I was so pleased that I gave half a franc to a pestilential Arab shoeblack.
“That was nice of you,” she said.
“It was the act of an imbecile,” I retorted. “I have now rendered it impossible for me to enter the town again. How is Dale?”
She started. “He's well. Busy with his election. I saw him the day before I left. I didn't tell him I was coming to Algiers. I wrote from Paris.”
“Telling him the reason?”