They calmed, they
soothed, they gave an attitude. And only three left! One had to be
kept for the morning, to be lighted before going through the gate of
doom--the gate of Belarab's stockade. A cigarette soothed, it gave an
attitude. Was this the fitting occasion for one of the remaining two?
D'Alcacer, a true Latin, was not afraid of a little introspection. In
the pause he descended into the innermost depths of his being, then
glanced up at the night sky. Sportsman, traveller, he had often looked
up at the stars before to see how time went. It was going very slowly.
He took out a cigarette, snapped-to the case, bent down to the embers.
Then he sat up and blew out a thin cloud of smoke. The man by his side
looked with his bowed head and clasped knee like a masculine rendering
of mournful meditation. Such attitudes are met with sometimes on the
sculptures of ancient tombs. D'Alcacer began to speak:
"She is a representative woman and yet one of those of whom there are
but very few at any time in the world. Not that they are very rare but
that there is but little room on top. They are the iridescent gleams on
a hard and dark surface. For the world is hard, Captain Lingard, it is
hard, both in what it will remember and in what it will forget. It
is for such women that people toil on the ground and underground and
artists of all sorts invoke their inspiration.
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