“To the glory of Sidna Aissa, master, two sous.”

He kept tugging at Habib’s sleeve, holding him back, sucking him back with his twisting reptile into the city of the faithful.

“In the name of Jesus, master, two copper sous!”

Habib’s nerves snapped.  He struck off the holy mendicant with his fist.  “That the devil grill thee!” he chattered.  He ran.  He bumped into beasts.  He bumped into a blue tunic.  He halted, blinked, and passed a hand over his hot-lidded eyes.  He stammered: 

“My friend!  I have been looking for you! Hamdou lillah!  El hamdou’llah!”

Raoul Genet, studying the flushed, bright-eyed, unsteady youth, put up a hand to cover a little smile, half ironic, half pitying.

“So, Habib ben Habib, you revert!  Camel-driver’s talk in your mouth and camel’s-hide slippers on your feet.  Already you revert!  Eh?”

“No, that is not the truth.  But I am in need of a friend.”

“You look like a ghost, Habib.”  The faint smile still twisted Raoul’s lips.  “Or a drunken angel.  You have not slept.”

“That’s of no importance.  I tell you I am in need—­”

“You’ve not had coffee, Habib.  When you’ve had coffee—­”

“Coffee!  My God!  Raoul, that you go on talking of coffee when life and death are in the balance!  For I can’t live without—­Listen, now!  Strictly!  I have need to-night—­to-morrow night—­one night when it is dark—­I have need of the garrison car.”

The other made a blowing sound.  “I’m the commandant, am I, overnight? Zut!  The garrison car!” Habib took hold of his arm and held it tight.  “If not the car, two horses, then.  And I call you my friend.”

“Two horses!  Ah!  So!  I begin to perceive.  Youth!  Youth!”

“Don’t jibe, Raoul!  I have need of two horses—­two horses that are fast and strong.”

“Are the horses in thy father’s stable, then, of no swiftness and of no strength?”

It was said in the patois, the bastard Arabic of the Tunisian bled.  A shadow had fallen across them; the voice came from above.  From the height of his crimson saddle Si Habib bel-Kalfate awaited the answer of his son.  His brown, unlined, black-bearded face, shadowed in the hood of his creamy burnoose, remained serene, benign, urbanely attendant.  But if an Arab knows when to wait, he knows also when not to wait.  And now it was as if nothing had been said before.

“Greeting, my son.  I have been seeking thee.  Thy couch was not slept upon last night.”

Habib’s face was sullen to stupidity.  “Last night, sire, I slept at the caserne, at the invitation of my friend, Lieutenant Genet, whom you see beside me.”

The Arab, turning in his saddle, appeared to notice the Christian for the first time.  His lids drooped; his head inclined an inch.

“Greeting to thee, oh, master!”

“To thee, greeting!”