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By Root 6353 0

free will. Then she realized that intuitively she already was aware of Port’s next move: he would contrive to miss connections with Tunner at Bou Noura. She could tell by his behavior, in spite of whatever he said, that he had no intention of meeting him there. That was why it seemed unkind. The deceit of the maneuver, if she were correct, was too bald; she determined not to be a party to it. “Even if Port runs out on him, I’ll stay and meet him.” She reached over and set the tray on the jackal skin; badly cured, the pelt gave off a sour odor. “Or am I only trying to go on punishing myself by seeing Tunner in front of me every day?” she wondered. “Would it be better really to get rid of him?” If only it were possible to dig behind the coming weeks and know! The clouds above the mountains had been a bad sign, but not in the way she had imagined. Instead of the wreck there had been another experience which perhaps would prove more disastrous in its results. As usual she was being saved up for something worse than she expected. But she did not believe it was to be Tunner, so that it really was not important how she behaved now with regard to him. The other omens indicated a horror more vast, and surely ineluctable. Each escape merely made it possible for her to advance into a region of heightened danger. “In that case,” she thought, “why not give in? And if I should give in, how would I behave? Exactly the same as now.” So that giving in or not giving in had nothing to do with her problem. She was pushing against her own existence. All she could hope to do was eat, sleep and cringe before her omens.

She spent most of the day in bed reading, getting dressed only to have lunch with Port down in the stinking patio under the arcade. Immediately on returning to her room she pulled her clothes off. The room had not been made up. She straightened the bed sheet and lay down again. The air was dry, hot, breathless. During the morning Port had been out in the town. She wondered how he could support the sun, even with his helmet; it made her ill to be in it even for five minutes. His was not a rugged body, yet he had wandered for hours in the oven-like streets and returned to eat heartily of the execrable food. And he had unearthed some Arab who expected them both to tea at six. He had impressed it upon her that on no account must they be late. It was typical of him to insist upon punctuality in the case of an anonymous shopkeeper in Ain Krorfa, when with his friends and with her he behaved in a most cavalier fashion, arriving at his appointments indifferently anywhere from a half-hour to two hours after the specified time.

The Arab’s name was Abdeslam ben Hadj Chaoui they called for him at his leather shop and waited for him to close and lock the front of it, He led them slowly through the twisting streets as the muezzin called, talking all the while in flowery French, and addressing himself principally to Kit.

“How happy I am! This is the first time I have the honor to invite a lady, and a gentleman, from New York. How I should like to go and see New York! What riches! Gold and silver everywhere! Le grand luxe pour tout le monde, ah! Not like Ain Krorfa-sand in the streets, a few palms, hot sun, sadness always. It is a great pleasure for me to be able to invite a lady from New York. And a gentleman. New York! What a beautiful word!” They let him talk on.

The garden, like all the gardens in Ain Krorfa, was really an orchard. Under the orange trees were small channels running with water fed from the well, which was built up on an artificial plateau at one end. The highest palms stood at the opposite end, near the wall that bordered the river-bed, and underneath one of these a great red and white wool rug was spread out. There they sat while a servant brought fire and the apparatus for making tea. The air was heavy with the odor of the spearmint that grew beside the water channels.

“We shall talk a little, while the water boils,” said their host, smiling beneficently from one to the other. “We plant the male palm here because it is