Page:The Plutocrat (1927).pdf/60

 Macklyn was the first to turn his head from her. He finished his amber drink, touched his lips delicately with a blue-bordered handkerchief, and said almost in a whisper: "I've written a few things in French. There's nothing else so flexible. Do you speak Arabic, Mr. Ogle?"

"Arabic? No. I've never had occasion to. Why?"

"I thought the item I saw about you mentioned you were going to North Africa. One can't know the Arabs unless he speaks with them. Of course it isn't all Arabic that they speak. By no means! There are some interesting poems in the Kabyle dialects, exquisite, wistful things. I remember one beginning, 'I play my shepherd's pipe on the hillside, and my love hears it among her young goats. How her heart beats as my dulcet sounds reach her ears'—a thing like a Sicilian Pastorale. These things are of the true art; they use no punctuation or capitals, let me tell you. They are not written at all in the original, they are transmitted by word of mouth because they are just cries from the heart. Of course they become conventional when transcribed in French. I suppose you'll go among the Kabyles?"

"Probably," Ogle returned, though he had never