"Duties?" he said in a low voice.
"Yes. Oughtn't we to do something presently, something besides being
happy?"
"What do you mean, Domini?"
"I hardly know, I don't know. You tell me."
There was an urging in her voice, as if she wanted, almost demanded,
something of him.
"You mean that a man must do some work in his life if he is to keep
himself a man," he said, not as if he were asking a question.
He spoke reluctantly but firmly.
"You know," he added, "that I have worked hard all my life, hard like a
labourer."
"Yes, I know," she said.
She stroked his hand, that was worn and rough, and spoke eloquently of
manual toil it had accomplished in the past.
"I know. Before we were married, that day when we sat in the garden, you
told me your life and I told you mine. How different they have been!"
"Yes," he said.
He lit a cigar and watched the smoke curling up into the gold of the
sunlit atmosphere.
"Mine in the midst of the world and yours so far away from it. I often
imagine that little place, El Krori, the garden, your brother, your
twin-brother Stephen, that one-eyed Arab servant--what was his name?"
"El Magin.
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