When Lilla and David went driving through the country, Hamoud prowled
all over the house.
He entered the study, to stare at the autographed music framed on the
walls, the manuscript strewn over the center table, the open piano. A
look of contempt appeared upon his face: for one reason, perhaps,
because he belonged to the Ibathi sect, who looked askance at music,
disdaining even the cantatas about the Birth of the Prophet. He went
out of the study in a rage, slammed the folding doors behind him, and
stood eyeing the damask-covered chair in which she usually sat.
He recalled the old tales of the lovers, he a Mohammedan and she a
Christian, who always fled away on a magic carpet to the safety of
Islam.
If it was an hour appointed for prayer, he went up to his room, closed
the door, took the Koran out of his Zanzibar box, a carved and brightly
painted chest bound with iron and furnished with padlocks. He opened
the Koran, but recited the verses from memory, trying to feel behind
the words the esoteric meanings expounded in the commentaries. This
done, he took out from his bosom the talisman that he wore attached to
a silver chain--a silver disc having on one side a square made up of
sacred characters, and on the other side the seal of Solomon. The
talisman recalled to him the careless days of good fortune; and he
became homesick.
Thereupon he produced a little censer, kindled a piece of charcoal, and
sprinkled the coal with aloes, gum incense, and musk. Sitting on his
heels, with the censer between his small hands, he lowered his face
toward the fumes, became drunk with sad memories. His tears hissed on
the red coal, and through a glittering film he saw the ancestral house,
the blush of the clove trees, the deep blue sea with the dhows slipping
out toward Muscat. He dried his eyes, put everything away, concealed
in his palm a tiny, empty, square vial of glass enameled with gold. He
appeared in the corridor, calm, stately, giving a passing housemaid a
look of scorn.
When all was silent he entered Lilla's rooms. Hamoud drew in through
his expanded nostrils the unique fragrance of this place, and trembled
as he looked round him at the walls of French gray, the faintly orange
hangings, all the charming objects that were so artfully arranged. He
passed into her bedroom, stood pensive before the dressing table whose
mirrors were accustomed to reflect her, reached out to touch the
handles of her brushes, as if expecting them to be still warm from her
hands. He remembered the tiny empty vial, at the same moment that he
heard the car returning.
Lilla, on entering her bedroom, found the air heavier than usual with
her perfume. It occurred to her that one of the servants must have
been taking some; and she was vexed to think that a housemaid should go
to meet a sweetheart wearing the fragrance that a Viennese expert in
odors had concocted "to express her special temperament."