“Nay, sidi, nay.”

“Am I a sheep between two wells, that the herder’s stick should tell me, ‘Here, and not there, thou shalt drink’?  Am I a sheep?”

“Thou art neither child nor sheep, sidi, but a lion!”

“Yes, a lion!” A sudden thin exaltation shook him like a fever chill.  “I am more than a lion, Nedjma, I am a man—­just as the Roumi” [Romans—­i.e., Christians.] “are men—­men who decide—­men who undertake—­agitate—­accomplish ... and now, for the last time, I have decided.  A fate has given thy loveliness to me, and no man shall take it away from me to enjoy.  I will take it away from them instead!  From all the men of this Africa, conquered by the French.  Hark!  I will come and take thee away in the night, to the land beyond the sea, where thou mayest be always near me, and neither God nor man say yes or no!”

“And there, sidi, beyond the sea, I may talk unveiled with other men?  As thou hast told me, in France ——­”

“Yes, yes, as I have told thee, there thou mayest—­thou ——­”

He broke off, lost in thought, staring down at the dim oval of her face.  Again he twitched a little.  Again his fingers tightened on her arms.  He twisted her around with a kind of violence of confrontation.

“But wouldst thou rather talk with other men than with me?  Dost thou no longer love me, then?”

“Ai, master, I love thee.  I wish to see no other man than thee.”

“Ah, my star, I know!” He drew her close and covered her face with his kisses.

And in her ear he whispered:  “And when I come for thee in the night, thou wilt go with me?  Say!”

“I will go, sidi.  In-cha-’llah!  If God will!”

At that he shook her again, even more roughly than before.

“Don’t say that!  Not, ‘If God will!’ Say to me, ‘If thou wilt.’”

“Ai—­Ai ——­”

There was a silence.

“But let it be quickly,” he heard her whispering, after a while.  Under his hand he felt a slow shiver moving over her arms. “Nekaf!” she breathed, so low that he could hardly hear.  “I am afraid.”

It was another night when the air was electric and men stirred in their sleep.  Lieutenant Genet turned over in bed and stared at the moonlight streaming in through the window from the court of the caserne.  In the moonlight stood Habib.

“What do you want?” Genet demanded, gruff with sleep.

“I came to you because you are my friend.”

The other rubbed his eyes and peered through the window to mark the Sudanese sentry standing awake beside his box at the gate.

“How did you get in?”

“I got in as I shall get out, not only from here, but from Kairwan, from Africa—­because I am a man of decision.”

“You are also, Habib, a skeleton.  The moon shows through you.  What have you been doing these weeks, these months, that you should be so shivery and so thin?  Is it Old Africa gnawing at your bones?  Or are you, perhaps, in love?”