"Wait a moment!" she heard him say.
And his voice sounded grave, like an intensely appreciative child's.
Click! "Parigi, O Cara!"
Mrs. Armine governed herself, drew breath, and once more turned towards Baroudi. On his strong, bold face there was the delighted expression of a boy. She looked, looked at him, and all her half-tender amusement died away, and again, as in the Villa Androud, she was encompassed by fear. The immense contrasts in this man, combined with his superb physique, made him to her irresistibly fascinating. In him there was a complete novelty to appeal to her jaded appetites, rendered 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.