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And yet she was not—she was not!

After supper the two men returned to the arbour to smoke and drink, and Madame Lemaire remained in the kitchen to clear away and wash up.

“Isn’t there something the matter with my wife?” asked Lemaire, lighting a thin, black cigar, and settling his loose, bulky body in the small chair, with his fat legs stretched out, and one foot crossed over the other. “Or is it that I’m out of sorts to-night? It seems to me as if she were strange.”

Bouvier was a small, pinched man, with a narrow face, evenly red in colour, large ears that stood out from his closely shaven head, and hot-looking, prominent brown eyes.

“Perhaps she’s taken with some Arab,” he said.

“P’f! She’s dropped all that nonsense. The devil! A woman of forty’s an old woman in Africa.”

Bouvier spat.

“Isn’t she?”

“Oh, don’t ask me about women. Young or old, they’re always calling the Devil to their elbow.”

“What for?”

“To put them up to wickedness. Perhaps your wife’s been calling him to-night. You look behind her presently, and you may catch a sight of him. He’s always about where women are.”