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He recoiled from his conjectures, to cower amid these shadows which he felt might be less agonizing than that flash of light. There was no reason for alarm, they told him. And instead of being mysterious it was a perfectly defined case of nerves, hysteria, emotional collapse. Ah, yes; but from what cause? Even Hamoud, he was sure, knew something that he did not know.
When all was silent he entered Lilla's rooms. Hamoud drew in through his expanded nostrils the unique fragrance of this place, and trembled as he looked round him at the walls of French gray, the faintly orange hangings, all the charming objects that were so artfully arranged.
Hamoud, towering there in the attire of an Omân gentleman which she took for a specially effective livery contemplated the great Mrs. Brassfield. His full eyelids were dreamily lowered over his lustrous eyes. His long, straight nose seemed narrower than usual, perhaps from disdain.
Hamoud stood before her, tall and spare, in a new, black alpaca suit as incongruous-looking as the old one. He made no response at once; and there was no change in his perfectly chiseled, tan features; but for all his impassiveness he managed remarkably to convey the impression that an immense calamity had befallen him.
"You're hurting me, Cornie. And there's the bell," she muttered, her heart going dead. He released her with the gesture of a man who hurls an enemy over a precipice. He gasped: "One of these days!" And with a livid smile he left the room as David Verne appeared in the doorway, in his wheel chair, propelled by Hamoud. But David, too, was nearly unrecognizable.
Taking his twitching face between her hands, she showed him her eyes filled with tears. "But I do understand," she protested. If she did, it was because she also was alone. That night, as she was going to her own room, she saw Hamoud in the upper corridor.
She stood motionless, aghast at her inability to remember why she was here. Hamoud's voice came to her from beyond the curtain: "There is going to be a shauri, a talk with these porters of yours." "Ah, my God! What is it now?" Hamoud cast back at her through the curtain, in a tone of bitterness: "Rebellion." She wrapped herself in her robe and cowered on the bed. Half an hour passed.
Hamoud, wearing the blue robe edged with gold embroidery, and carrying in his right hand the Venetian goblet, was half-way out of the living-room when David Verne resumed: "No, you must really go about more, or you will begin to hate me."
From under the feet of the machilla carriers a cloud of mauve butterflies rose like flowers to strew themselves over her soft body. It was as if the machilla had suddenly become a bier. "God forbid it!" Hamoud muttered, averting his face from that sign.
Something forlorn and lost in his exotic aspect struck through her sadness: she remembered how far from home this exile was, how far removed also from the rank to which he had been born. She hesitated, then asked remorsefully: "Do you hate me, Hamoud?" He turned pale, standing before her with the wall light shining upon his face of a young caliph. "I, madam?"
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