The stars were coming out in the sky; the coolness of the night
was already in the air. The old Arab had long ago departed; the
kif-smoking youth were gone. I was alone under the vine trellis,
with the dark lines of the palm grove before me in the falling
night. The proprietor, a mild-faced and gentle-mannered old Arab,
came, as I rose to go, with a few pleasant words, and gave me a
small branch of orange-flowers and a spray of the white flower of
the palm. “_C’est le mâle_,” he said with a smile. And as
I rode home over the silent desert, and, crossing the bed of the
oued, looked back on the mountain wall and swept with my gaze the
great, dark waste under the stars, I found myself repeating his
words—“_C’est le mâle_.”