ed capricious and uneasy
by years of so-called pleasure. A few minutes ago, when he had spoken of
death, he had been a mysterious and cruel fatalist. Now he was a
deliciously absurd child, but a child with the frame of a splendid man.

The musical box clicked. "Salve Dimora."

"Do you feel better?" he asked her.

She nodded.

"I bought it in Naples."

He lifted the box in his strong brown hands, and held it nearer to her.
Nothing in his face betrayed any suspicion that she could be amused in
an ironical sense. It was obvious that he supposed her to be as happily
impressed as he was.

"You hear it better now."

She nodded again. Then:

"Hold it close to my ear," she said, in a whisper, keeping her eyes upon
him.

He obeyed. Once his hand touched her ear, and she felt its warm dryness,
and she sighed.

"Salve Dimora" ceased.

"Another!" she said.

And she said, "Another!" and "Another!" until the box's repertoire was
finished, and then she made him turn on once more, "Come o'er the
Moonlit Sea!"

Her gloves lay on the divan beside her, and she did not draw them on
again. She did not even pick them up till the heat of the sun's rays was
declining, and the musical box had long been silent.

"I must go," she said at last.

She put her hands up to her disordered hair.

"Indeed I must."

She looked at her watch and started up.

"It's horribly late. Where is Ibrahim?"

Ibrahim's smiling face was seen at the window.

"The donkey, Ibrahim! I want the donkey at once!"

"All what you want you must have."

He nodded his head, as if agreeing passively with himself, and looked on
the ground.

"Hamza he ready. Hamza very good donkey-boy."

"That's right. I am coming," she said.

Ibrahim saluted, still smiling, and disappeared. Mrs. Armine walked to
the window and looked out.

It was already the time of sunset, and the unearthly radiance of the
magical hour in this land of atmospheric magic began to fall upon the
little isolated house, upon the great garden of oranges by which it was
encircled. The dry earth of the alleys glowed gently; the narrow trunks
of the trees became delicately mysterious; the leaves and the treasure
they guarded seemed, in their perfect stillness, to be full of secret
promises. Still the birds that dwelled among them were singing to each
other softly the praises of God.

Mrs. Armine looked out, listened to the birds, while the sun went down
in the west she could not see. An