He blew a kiss. "Shall I forget them? Never!" Madame Sennier was evidently quite undisturbed. "You've given him a good time," she observed. "Indeed I'm afraid you've spoilt him. But are there really passion-flowers in the garden?" "I don't believe it!" said Max Elliot, laughing. The composer seized his arm. "Come with me, Max, and I will show you. England, that is the land of the sceptics. But you shall learn to have faith. And you, my Susan, come!" He seized these two, who happened to be nearest to him, and, laughing like a child, but with imperative hands, compelled them to go out with him to the courtyard. Their steps died away on the pavement. The three women were left alone. "Shall we sit in the court?" said Charmian. "I think it's cooler there. There's a little breeze from the sea." "Let us go, then," said Madame Sennier. When they were sitting not far from the fountain, which made a pleasant murmur as it fell into the pool where the three goldfish moved slowly as if in a vague and perpetual search, Charmian turned the conversation to Constantine. "It's perfectly marvellous!" said Mrs. Shiffney. "Barbaric and extraordinary." And she talked of the gorge and of the Chemin des Touristes. Madame Sennier spoke of the terrific wall of rock from which, in the days before the French occupation, faithless wives were sometimes hurled to death by their Arab husbands. "_C'est affreux!_" she exclaimed, lapsing into French. She put up her hand to her veil, and pulled it tightly under her prominent chin with twisting fingers. "_Les Arabes sont des monstres._" As she spoke, as with her cold yellow eyes she glanced through the interstices of her veil at Charmian, she thought of Claude's libretto. "Oh, but they are very attractive!" said Charmian quickly. She, too, was thinking of the libretto with its Arab characters, its African setting. Not knowing, not suspecting that Madame Sennier had read it, she supposed that Madame Sennier was expressing a real and instinctive disgust. The Frenchwoman shrugged her shoulders. "_Ce sont tous des monstres mal propres!_" "Henriette can't bear them," said Mrs. Shiffney, pushing a dried leaf of eucalyptus idly over the pavement with the point of her black-and-white parasol. "And do you know I really believe that there is a strong antipathy between West and East. I don't think Europeans and Americans really feel attracted by Arabs, except perhaps just at first because they are picturesque." "Americans!" cried Madame Sennier. "Why, anything to do with what they call color drives them quite mad!" "Negroes are not Arabs," said Charmian, almost warmly. "It is all the same. _Ils sont tous des monstres affreux._" "Tst! Tst! Tst!" The voice of Jacques came up from the garden. "What is it?" "Tst! Tst!" They were silent, and heard in the distance faintly a sound of drumming and of native music. "I must go! I must hear, see!" The composer cried out.