"Then he must often be in bad humor," I said simply. Those were my first words. They brought a smile to Antinea's lips. She gave me a long, quiet look. "Aguida," she said to one of the Targa women, "you will give twenty-five pounds in gold to Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh." "You are a lieutenant?" she asked, after a pause. "Yes." "Where do you come from?" "From France." "I might have guessed that," she said ironically, "but from what part of France?" "From what we call the Lot-et-Garonne." "From what town?" "From Duras." She reflected a moment. "Duras! There is a little river there, the Dropt, and a fine old château." "You know Duras?" I murmured, amazed. "You go there from Bordeaux by a little branch railway," she went on. "It is a shut-in road, with vine-covered hills crowned by the feudal ruins. The villages have beautiful names: Monségur, Sauve-terre-de-Guyenne, la Tresne, Créon, ... Créon, as in Antigone." "You have been there?" She looked at me. "Don't speak so coldly," she said. "Sooner or later we will be intimate, and you may as well lay aside formality now." This threatening promise suddenly filled me with great happiness. I thought of Le Mesge's words: "Don't talk until you have seen her. When you have seen her, you will renounce everything for her." "Have I been in Duras?" she went on with a burst of laughter. "You are joking. Imagine Neptune's granddaughter in the first-class compartment of a local train!" She pointed to an enormous white rock which towered above the palm trees of the garden. "That is my horizon," she said gravely. She picked up one of several books which lay scattered about her on the lion's skin. "The time table of the _Chemin de Fer de l'Ouest_," she said. "Admirable reading for one who never budges! Here it is half-past five in the afternoon. A train, a local, arrived three minutes ago at Surgères in the Charente-Inférieure. It will start on in six minutes. In two hours it will reach La Rochelle. How strange it seems to think of such things here. So far away! So much commotion there! Here, nothing changes." "You speak French well," I said. She gave a little nervous laugh. "I have to. And German, too, and Italian, and English and Spanish. My way of living has made me a great polygot. But I prefer French, even to Tuareg and Arabian. It seems as if I had always known it. And I am not saying that to please you." There was a pause. I thought of her grandmother, of whom Plutarch said: "There were few races with which she needed an interpreter. Cleopatra spoke their own language to the Ethiopians, to the Troglodytes, the Hebrews, the Arabs, the Medes and the Persians." "Do not stand rooted in the middle of the room. You worry me. Come sit here, beside me. Move over, King Hiram." The leopard obeyed with good temper. Beside her was an onyx bowl. She took from it a perfectly plain ring of orichalch and slipped it on my left ring-finger. I saw that she wore one like it.