"So, Habib ben Habib, you revert! Camel-driver's talk in your mouth and camel's-hide slippers on your feet. Already you revert! Eh?" "No, that is not the truth. But I am in need of a friend." "You look like a ghost, Habib." The faint smile still twisted Raoul's lips. "Or a drunken angel. You have not slept." "That's of no importance. I tell you I am in need--" "You've not had coffee, Habib. When you've had coffee--" "Coffee! My God! Raoul, that you go on talking of coffee when life and death are in the balance! For I can't live without--Listen, now! Strictly! I have need to-night--to-morrow night--one night when it is dark--I have need of the garrison car." The other made a blowing sound. "I'm the commandant, am I, overnight? _Zut_! The garrison car!" Habib took hold of his arm and held it tight. "If not the car, two horses, then. And I call you my friend." "_Two_ horses! Ah! So! I begin to perceive. Youth! Youth!" "Don't jibe, Raoul! I have need of two horses--two horses that are fast and strong." "Are the horses in thy father's stable, then, of no swiftness and of no strength?" It was said in the _patois_, the bastard Arabic of the Tunisian _bled_. A shadow had fallen across them; the voice came from above. From the height of his crimson saddle Si Habib bel-Kalfate awaited the answer of his son. His brown, unlined, black-bearded face, shadowed in the hood of his creamy burnoose, remained serene, benign, urbanely attendant. But if an Arab knows when to wait, he knows also when not to wait. And now it was as if nothing had been said before. "Greeting, my son. I have been seeking thee. Thy couch was not slept upon last night." Habib's face was sullen to stupidity. "Last night, sire, I slept at the _caserne_, at the invitation of my friend, Lieutenant Genet, whom you see beside me." The Arab, turning in his saddle, appeared to notice the Christian for the first time. His lids drooped; his head inclined an inch. "Greeting to thee, oh, master!" "To thee, greeting!" "Thou art in well-being?" "There is no ill. And thou?" "There is no ill. That the praise be to God, and the prayer!" Bel-Kalfate cleared his throat and lifted the reins from the neck of his mare. "Rest in well-being!" he pronounced. Raoul shrugged his shoulders a little and murmured: "May God multiply thy days!... And yours, too," he added to Habib in French. He bowed and took his leave. Bel-Kalfate watched him away through the thinning crowd, sitting his saddle stolidly, in an attitude of rumination. When the blue cap had vanished behind the blazing corner of the wool dyers, he threw the reins to his Sudanese stirrup boy and got down to the ground. He took his son's hand. So, palm in palm, at a grave pace, they walked back under the arch into the city. The market-going stream was nearly done. The tide, against which at its flood Habib had fought and won ground, carried him down again with its last shallow wash--so easily!