Mrs. Shiffney got up and begged Ferdinand to sing again, mentioning several songs by name. He shook his head, letting his apparently boneless and square-nailed hands stray about over the piano all the time she was speaking to him. "_Non, non! Ce soir non! Impossible!_" "Then sing _Petite Fille de Tombouctou_!" she exclaimed at last. And before he could answer she turned round, smiling, and said: "_Petite Fille de Tombouctou_." There was a murmur of delight, and the impertinent girl with laurel leaves in her dark hair suddenly looked exotic and full of languors. And Charmian thought of the yacht. Had Mrs. Shiffney received Claude Heath's answer yet? He was to make up his mind on Sunday. Rades was singing. His accompaniment was almost terribly rhythmical, with a suggestion of the little drums that the black men love. She saw fierce red flowers while he sang, strange alleys with houses like huts, trees standing stiffly in a blaze of heat, sand, limbs the color of slate. The sound of the curious voice had become Eastern, the look in the insolent black eyes Eastern. There seemed to be an odd intoxication in the face, pale, impassive, and unrighteous, as if the effects of a drug were beginning to steal upon the senses. And the white, square-nailed hands beat gently upon the piano till many people, unconsciously, began to sway ever so little to and fro. An angry look came into Millie Deans's eyes, and when the last drum throb died away and the little girl of Tombouctou slept for ever in the sand, slain by her Prince of Darkness, for a reason that seemed absurdly inadequate to the British composer who was a prop of the provincial festivals, but quite adequate to almost every woman in the room, her mouth set in a hardness that was almost menacing. After ten minutes' conversation an English soprano sang Bach's _Heart Ever Faithful_. Variety was always welcomed at the parties in Cadogan Square. "Glorious, old chap!" said the British composer. "We've come up into God's air now." The critic swung his right arm like a man who enjoyed bowling practice at the nets. "Lung exercise! Lung exercise!" he breathed. "And that drop at the end! What a stroke of genius!" Mrs. Shiffney had disappeared with Rades. She loved Bach--in the supper room. In the general movement which took place when the soprano had left the dais, escorted by Max Elliot, to have a glass of something, Charmian found herself beside Margot Drake, the girl with the laurel leaves.