She stopped, drew a long breath, and added: 

“You must forgive me.  I have worried you.  I have made you do what you didn’t want to do.  And then I have attacked you.  It is unpardonable.”

“Show me the garden, Madame,” he said in a very low voice.

Her outburst over, she felt a slight self-consciousness.  She wondered what he thought of her and became aware of her unconventionality.  His curious and persistent reticence made her frankness the more marked.  Yet the painful sensation of oppression and exasperation had passed away from her and she no longer thought of his personality as destructive.  In obedience to his last words she walked on, and he kept heavily beside her, till they were in the deep shadows of the closely-growing trees and the spell of the garden began to return upon her, banishing the thought of self.

“Listen!” she said presently.

Larbi’s flute was very near.

“He is always playing,” she whispered.

“Who is he?”

“One of the gardeners.  But he scarcely ever works.  He is perpetually in love.  That is why he plays.”

“Is that a love-tune then?” Androvsky asked.

“Yes.  Do you think it sounds like one?”

“How should I know, Madame?”

He stood looking in the direction from which the music came, and now it seemed to hold him fascinated.  After his question, which sounded to her almost childlike, and which she did not answer, Domini glanced at his attentive face, to which the green shadows lent a dimness that was mysterious, at his tall figure, which always suggested to her both weariness and strength, and remembered the passionate romance to whose existence she awoke when she first heard Larbi’s flute.  It was as if a shutter, which had closed a window in the house of life, had been suddenly drawn away, giving to her eyes the horizon of a new world.  Was that shutter now drawn back for him?  No doubt the supposition was absurd.  Men of his emotional and virile type have travelled far in that world, to her mysterious, ere they reach his length of years.  What was extraordinary to her, in the thought of it alone, was doubtless quite ordinary to him, translated into act.  Not ignorant, she was nevertheless a perfectly innocent woman, but her knowledge told her that no man of Androvsky’s strength, power and passion is innocent at Androvsky’s age.  Yet his last dropped-out question was very deceptive.  It had sounded absolutely natural and might have come from a boy’s pure lips.  Again he made her wonder.

There was a garden bench close to where they were standing.  “If you like to listen for a moment we might sit down,” she said.

He started.

“Yes.  Thank you.”

When they were sitting side by side, closely guarded by the gigantic fig and chestnut trees which grew in this part of the garden, he added: 

“Whom does he love?”

“No doubt one of those native women whom you consider utterly without attraction,” she answered with a faint touch of malice which made him redden.