"Go," Antinea ordered imperiously.

The beast crawled reluctantly toward me. He laid his head humbly
between his paws and waited.

I stroked his beautiful spotted forehead.

"You must not be vexed," said Antinea. "He is always that way with
strangers."

"Then he must often be in bad humor," I said simply.

Those were my first words. They brought a smile to Antinea's lips.

She gave me a long, quiet look.

"Aguida," she said to one of the Targa women, "you will give
twenty-five pounds in gold to Cegheir-ben-Cheikh."

"You are a lieutenant?" she asked, after a pause.

"Yes."

"Where do you come from?"

"From France."

"I might have guessed that," she said ironically, "but from what part
of France?"

"From what we call the Lot-et-Garonne."

"From what town?"

"From Duras."

She reflected a moment.

"Duras! There is a little river there, the Dropt, and a fine old
chateau."

"You know Duras?" I murmured, amazed.

"You go there from Bordeaux by a little branch railway," she went
on. "It is a shut-in road, with vine-covered hills crowned by
the feudal ruins. The villages have beautiful names: Monsegur,
Sauve-terre-de-Guyenne, la Tresne, Creon, ... Creon, as in Antigone."

"You have been there?"

She looked at me.

"Don't speak so coldly," she said. "Sooner or later we will be
intimate, and you may as well lay aside formality now."

This threatening promise suddenly filled me with great happiness. I
thought of Le Mesge's words: "Don't talk until you have seen her. When
you have seen her, you will renounce everything for her."

"Have I been in Duras?" she went on with a burst of laughter. "You are
joking. Imagine Neptune's granddaughter in the first-class compartment
of a local train!"

She pointed to an enormous white rock which towered above the palm
trees of the garden.

"That is my horizon," she said gravely.

She picked up one of several books which lay scattered about her on
the lion's skin.

"The time table of the _Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest_," she said.
"Admirable reading for one who never budges! Here it is half-past five
in the afternoon. A train, a local, arrived three minutes ago at
Surgeres in the Charente-Inferieure. It will start on in six minutes.
In two hours it will reach La Rochelle. How strange it seems to think
of such things here. So far away! So much commotion there! Here,
nothing changes."

"You speak French well," I said.

She gave a little nervous laugh.

"I