A sudden sting pierced him at the thought of how old he was, and how young Helene. Even if he lived to be seventy or eighty, she would still have a life left when he died. Yes, it was as Shaban said. They were getting old. He had never really felt the humiliation of it before. And Shaban had said, strangely, something else--that his own wife was safer than the Pasha's. Still he felt an odd compassion for Helene, too--because she was young, and it was Judas-tree time, and she was married to gray hairs. And although he was a pasha, descended from great pashas, and she was only a little French girl _quelconque_, he felt more afraid than ever of making a fool of himself before her--when he had promised her that she should be as free as any other European woman, that she should live her life. Besides, what had the black man to do with their private affairs? 'Zuembuel Agha,' he suddenly heard himself harshly saying, 'is this your house or mine? I have told you a hundred times that you are not to trouble the madama, or follow her about, or so much as guess where she is and what she is doing. I have kept you in the house because my father brought you into it; but if I ever hear of your speaking to madama again, or spying on her, I will send you into the street. Do you hear? Now get out!' '_Aman_, my Pasha! I beg you!' entreated the eunuch. There was something ludicrous in his voice, coming as it did from his height. The Pasha wondered if he had been too long a person of importance in the family to realize the change in his position, or whether he really-- All of a sudden a checkering of lamplight flickered through the dark window, touched the negro's black face for a moment, traveled up the wall. Silence fell again in the little room--a silence into which the fountain dropped its silver patter. Then steps mounted the porch and echoed in the other room, which lighted in turn, and a man came in sight, peering this way and that, with a big white accordeon lantern in his hand. Behind the man two other servants appeared, carrying on their heads round wooden trays covered by figured silks, and a boy tugging a huge basket. When they discovered the three in the little room they salaamed respectfully. 'Where shall we set the table?' asked the man with the lantern. For the Pasha the lantern seemed to make the world more like the place he had always known. He turned to his wife apologetically. 'I told them to send dinner up here. It has been such a long time since we came. But I forgot about the table. I don't believe there is one here.' 'No,' uttered Helene from her sofa, sitting with her head on her hand. It was the first word she had spoken. But, little as it was, it reassured him, like the lantern. 'There is the chest,' hazarded Zuembuel Agha. The interruption of the servants had for the moment distracted them all. But the Pasha now turned on him so vehemently that the eunuch salaamed in haste and went away. III