Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/83

Rh did just as you liked, exactly as before; and the person adored you, and even if be lost bis temper sometimes over a beefsteak, or a missing shirt, he was still the most charming person in the world.

Teresa smiled, looking into the fire, which had sunk together into a red core of coals. It struck her that bed would be a more comfortable place to read. Basil objected to her reading in bed, but all the same she had had an electric light hung just over her pillow, and she quoted Charles Lamb to prove to him that it was the only place to read in. When she had arranged herself luxuriously under this light, in her quiet room, where the roar of the city ascended only as a muffled bass, she unbraided her long braids, and, with the book propped on her knees, she slowly brushed the dark ripples of hair out to their ends, and began to read:

"Il y avait, dans la ville de Baghdad, un homme qui était célibataire et aussi portefaix.

"Un jour d'entre les jours, pendant qu'il était dans le souk, nonchalamment appuyé sur sa hotte, voici que devant lui s'arrêta une femme enveloppée de son ample voile en étoffe de Moussoul, en son parsemée de paillettes d'or et doublée de brocart. Elle souleva un peu son petit voile de visage et, d'en dessous, alors, apparurent des yeux noirs avec de longs cils et quelles pau-