n.

"Jacques has been telling me about your kindness to him," said Madame
Sennier, "and your long talks about opera, America, the audiences over
there, the managers, the money-making. I'm afraid he must have bored you
with our affairs."

"Oh, no!" said Charmian quickly, and faintly reddening. "We have had a
delightful time."

"Adorable!" said Sennier. "And those syrups of fruit, the strawberry,
the greengage! And the omelettes of Jeanne, 'Jeanne la Grande,'"--he
flung forth his arms to indicate the breadth of the cook. "And the
evenings of moonlight, when we wandered between the passion-flowers!"

He blew a kiss.

"Shall I forget them? Never!"

Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed.

"You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've
spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?"

"I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing.

The composer seized his arm.

"Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of
the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan,
come!"

He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing
like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with
him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three
women were left alone.

"Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there.
There's a little breeze from the sea."

"Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier.

When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant
murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as
if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to
Constantine.

"It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and
extraordinary."

And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame
Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days
before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to
death by their Arab husbands.

"_C'est affreux!_" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her
hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with
twisting fingers.

"_Les Arabes sont des monstres._"

As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the
interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto.

"Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly.

She, too, was thinking of the libretto