and the curious silence of this abode, which threw the mind far back
into a past when the Arab was a law unto himself and to his household,
when he dreamed in what he thought full liberty, when Europe concerned
him not. And most of all he liked his own workroom, though this was an
addition to the house, and had been made by a French painter who had
been a former tenant. This was the chamber built upon the roof, which
formed a flat terrace in front of it, commanding a splendid view over
the town, the bay, Cap Matifou, and the distant range of the Atlas.
Moorish tiles decorated the walls to a height of some three feet, tiles
purple, white, and a watery green. Above them was a cream-colored
distemper. At the back of the room, opposite to the French window which
opened on to the roof, was an arched recess some four feet narrower than
the rest of the room, ornamented with plaques of tiles, and delicate
lacelike plaster-work above low windows which came to within a foot and
a half of the floor. A brass Oriental lamp with white, green, and yellow
beads hung in the archway. An old carpet woven at Kairouan before the
time of aniline dyes was spread over the floor. White and green
curtains, and furniture covered in white and green, harmonized with the
tiles and the white and cream plaster. Through the windows could be seen
dark cypress trees, the bright blue of the sea, the white and faint red
of the crowding houses of the town.

It was better than the small chamber in Kensington Square, better than
the studio in Renwick Place.

"I ought to be able to work here!" Claude thought.

The small inner Arab court, with its fountain, its marble basin
containing three goldfish, its roofed-in coffee-chamber, the little
dining-room separated from the rest of the house, pleased them both. And
Charmian took the garden, which ran rather wild, and was full of
geraniums, orange trees, fig trees, ivy growing over old bits of wall,
and untrained rose bushes, into her special charge.

Their household seemed likely to be a success. As cook they had an
astonishingly broad-bosomed Frenchwoman, whom they called "La Grande
Jeanne," and who immediately settled down like a sort of mother of the
house; a tall, thin, and birdlike Frenchman named Pierre, who had been a
soldier, and then for several years a servant at the Trappist Monastery
at Staoueli; Charmian's maid; and an Arab boy whom everyone called Bibi,
and who alternated between a demeanor full