"Thou art jealous, then! But thou canst not comprehend. Canst thou comprehend this, that thou art more beautiful by many times than any other woman I have ever seen? Thou art a heaven of loveliness, and I cannot live without thee. That is true ... Nedjma. I am going to take thee for my wife, because I cannot live without thine eyes, thy lips, the fragrance of thy hair.... Yes, I am going to marry thee, my star. It is written! It is written!" For the first time he could not see her eyes. She had turned them away. Once again something had come in contact with the smooth, heavy substance of her mind. He pulled at her. "Say! Say, Nedjmà!... It is written!" "It is not written, _sidi_." The same ungroping acquiescence was in her whisper. "I have been promised, _sidi_, to another than thee." Habib's arms let go; her weight sank away in the dark under the vine. The silence of the dead night crept in and lay between them. "And in the night of thy marriage, then, thy husband--or thy father, if thou hast a father--will kill thee." "_In-cha-'llah_. If it be the will of God." Again the silence came and lay heavy between them. A minute and another minute went away. Habib's wrists were shaking. His breast began to heave. With a sudden roughness he took her back, to devour her lips and eyes and hair with the violence of his kisses. "No, no! I'll not have it! No! Thou art too beautiful for any other man than I even to look upon! No, no, no!" * * * * * Habib ben Habib walked out of the gate Djelladin. The day had come; the dawn made a crimson flame in the false-pepper trees. The life of the gate was already at full tide of sound and colour, braying, gargling, quarrelling--nomads wading in their flocks, Djlass countrymen, Singalese soldiers, Jewish pack-peddlers, Bedouin women bent double under their stacks of desert fire-grass streaming inward, dust white, dust yellow, and all red in the dawn under the red wall. The flood ran against him. It tried to suck him back into the maw of the city. He fought against it with his shoulders and his knees. He tried now to run. It sucked him back. A wandering _Aissaoua_ plucked at his sleeve and held under his nose a desert viper that gave off metallic rose glints in its slow, pained constrictions. "To the glory of Sidna Aissa, master, two sous." He kept tugging at Habib's sleeve, holding him back, sucking him back with his twisting reptile into the city of the faithful. "In the name of Jesus, master, two copper sous!" Habib's nerves snapped. He struck off the holy mendicant with his fist. "That the devil grill thee!" he chattered. He ran. He bumped into beasts. He bumped into a blue tunic. He halted, blinked, and passed a hand over his hot-lidded eyes. He stammered: "My friend! I have been looking for you! _Hamdou lillah! El hamdou'llah_!" Raoul Genet, studying the flushed, bright-eyed, unsteady youth, put up a hand to cover a little smile, half ironic, half pitying.