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Then he regarded the center table, on which stood the Venetian goblet, the caraffe, and the bottle filled with the medicine prescribed by Dr. Fallows. In the expiring daylight Hamoud, motionless in his robes, loomed paler than usual, his handsome face very grave. The piano attracted his attention.
"Not only this moment. Always." In the morning, when Brantome had departed for the city, Lilla said to Hamoud: "Please tell the servants that if any one should ask for me I'm not at home." Soon afterward, while David was at work shut up in the study, and Lilla was trying to read a book in the living room, the doorbell rang.
Then, after stepping back to consider this arrangement with a strained look, he went to the fireplace, lighted a match, blew it out, and laid it on the hearth. David stared at him. "You have not lighted the fire. It is cold tonight." Again Hamoud listened in awe to the sound of that voice. "It is cold," he assented softly, with a shiver.
It was Hamoud, his turban gone, his cheek smeared with loam, one shoulder of his robe stained a deep violet. Clapping his sandaled foot upon the spear blade, he seized the Mambava by his plume of egrets. The painted head was dragged back. The Zanzibar dagger shone through the ribbons of smoke. Her mouth twisted in abnormal shapes as she struggled to cry out.
He bowed his head till his dirty, yellowish poll nearly touched his gray knees that were covered with callouses. Amid the close-packed, silent audience a smothered phrase rose to the ears of the interpreter. Hamoud, turning away his face, cast forth the words: "Too late."
She went on groping for phrases as one gropes for objects in the dark, telling Hamoud that henceforth nobody from outside the house was to see David till she had been informed, that all newspapers and letters must come first to her, that the servants must not show by so much as a look She became aware that among these phrases she was uttering, with an air of calm consideration, others that had no intelligible meaning, no relation to her objective thoughts.
These thin, hard bodies, buffeting her about, formed round her a rampart from which the blades of steel were answered by blades of flame. Hamoud rose from the ground at her feet, drawing his dagger. An askari grunted and sat down with a thud. Then she saw that they were in the midst of a glade.
She heard herself say, "Perhaps I had better see the servants myself. It would be a queer thing if there were a draft from the pantry. There is a red pillow in the fernery; it must be hidden the spears, too " She gazed in perplexity at Hamoud, who appeared to be floating before her at the end of a dark tunnel. "For how long?" he sighed. "For how long?" she repeated plaintively.
Hamoud's look of sadness gave place to a look of peace. At daybreak the safari entered the forest. Two askaris went first, guarding the albino. Next, since the forest trail was too narrow for hammock travel, Lilla came afoot with Hamoud, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling no physical weariness or pain. Behind her the rest of the askaris herded along the porters.
But just as she had conquered fear, so, by a supreme resolution, she conquered her vertigo, the burning of her emaciated limbs, the quaking of her body which a moment before had been bathed in moisture. At sunset she descended from the machilla to give Hamoud a look of astonishment, while replying: "No, I am well."
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