"Yes, love, too, is the perfume in the vial. But the man who has that vial opens the windows and throws the stopper away, and all the air is sweet forever. The perfume evaporates, forever. And this, Habib, is the miracle. The vial is never any emptier than when it began." "Yes, yes--I know--perhaps--but to-night I have no time ----" The moon _did_ shine through him. He was but a rag blown in the dark wind. He had been torn to pieces too long. "I have no time!" he repeated, with a feverish force. "Listen, Raoul, my dear friend. To-day the price was paid in the presence of the _cadi_, Ben Iskhar. Three days from now they lead me to marriage with the daughter of the notary. What, to me, is the daughter of the notary? They lead me like a sheep to kill at a tomb.... Raoul, for the sake of our friendship, give me hold of your hand. To-morrow night--the car! Or, if you say you haven't the disposal of the car, bring me horses." And again the shaking of his nerves got the better of him; again he tumbled back into the country tongue. "For the sake of God, bring me two horses! By Sidna Aissa! by the Three Hairs from the Head of the Prophet I swear it! My first-born shall be named for thee, Raoul. Only bring thou horses! Raoul! Raoul!" It was the whine of the beggar of Barbary. Genet lay back, his hands behind his head, staring into shadows under the ceiling. "Better the car. I'll manage it with some lies. To-morrow night at moonset I'll have the car outside the gate Djedid." After a moment he added, under his breath, "But I know your kind too well, Habib ben Habib, and I know that you will not be there." Habib was not there. From moonset till half-past three, well over two hours, Genet waited, sitting on the stone in the shadow of the gate, prowling the little square inside. He smoked twenty cigarettes. He yawned three times twenty times. At last he went out got into the car and drove away. As the throb of the engine grew faint a figure in European clothes and a long-tasselled _chechia_ crept out from the dark of a door arch along the street. It advanced toward the gate. It started back at a sound. It rallied again, a figure bedeviled by vacillation. It came as far as the well in the centre of the little square. On the horizon toward the coast of Sousse rested a low black wall of cloud. Lightning came out of it from time to time and ran up the sky, soundless, glimmering.... The cry of the morning muezzin rolled down over the town. The lightning showed the figure sprawled face down on the cool stone of the coping of the well.... The court of the house of bel-Kalfate swam in the glow of candles. A striped awning shut out the night sky, heavy with clouds, and the women, crowding for stolen peeps on the flat roof. A confusion of voices, raillery, laughter, eddied around the arcaded walls, and thin music bound it together with a monotonous count of notes.