ulay Saa's right hand, please God, and I
shall cut the necks of _Roumi_ with my sword, like barley straw!"

Habib advanced in the spotlight of the candles. Under the burnoose his
face, half shadowed, looked green and white, as if he were sick to his
death. Or, perhaps, as if he were being born again.

The minutes passed, and they were hours. The music went on,
interminable.

"_Boom-boom-boom-boom_ ----" But now Habib himself was the instrument,
and now the old song of his race played its will on him.

Pinkness began to creep over the green-white cheeks. The cadence of
the chanting had changed. It grew ardent, melting, voluptuous.

_... And conquests I have made among the fair ones, perfume inundated,
Beauties ravishing; that sway in an air of musk and saffron, Bearing
still on their white necks the traces of kisses...._

It hung under the pepper trees, drunk with the beauty of flesh,
fainting with passion. Above the trees mute lightning played in the
cloud. Habib ben Habib was born again. Again, after exile, he came
back into the heritage. He saw the heaven of the men of his race. He
saw Paradise in a walking dream. He saw women forever young and
forever lovely in a land of streams, women forever changing, forever
virgin, forever new; strangers intimate and tender. The angels of a
creed of love--or of lust!

"Lust is the thing you find where you don't find trust."

A thin echo of the Frenchman's diatribe flickered through his memory,
and he smiled. He smiled because his eyes were open now. He seemed to
see this Christian fellow sitting on his bed, bare-footed,
rumple-haired, talking dogmatically of perfumes and vials and stoppers
thrown away, talking of faith in women. And that was the jest. For he
seemed to see the women, over there in Paris, that the brothers of
that naive fellow trusted--trusted alone with a handsome young
university student from Tunisia. Ha-ha-ha! Now he remembered. He
wanted to laugh out loud at a race of men that could be as simple as
that. He wanted to laugh at the bursting of the iridescent bubble of
faith in the virtue of beautiful women. The Arab knew!

A colour of health was on his face; his step had grown confident. Of a
sudden, and very quietly, all the mixed past was blotted out. He heard
only the chanting voices and the beating drums.

_Once I came into the tent of a young beauty on a day of rain....
Beauty blinding.... Charms that ravished and made drunkards of the
eyes...._