expects you to reciprocate. When that was over ben Nazir took us
to the corner and presented, first me, then Anazeh to the
solitary man in the white head-dress, who seemed to think himself
too important to trouble about manners.

Anazeh did not quite like my receiving attention first, and he
liked still less the off-handed way in which the solitary man
received us. We were told his name was Suliman ben Saoud. He
acknowledged my greeting. He and old Anazeh glared at each
other, barely moving their heads in what might have been an
unspoken threat and retort or a nod of natural recognition.
Anazeh turned on his heel and joined the other guests.

In some vague way I knew that Saoud was a name to conjure
with, although memory refused to place it. The man's air of
indifference and apparently unstudied insolence suggested he was
some one well used to authority. Presuming on the one thing that
I felt quite sure of by that time--my privileged position as a
guest--I stayed, to try to draw him out. I tried to open up
conversation with him with English, French, and finally lame
Arabic. He took no apparent notice of the French and English,
but he smiled sarcastically at my efforts with his own tongue.
Except that he moved his lips he made no answer but went on
clicking the beads of a splendid amber rosary.

Ben Nazir, seeming to think that Anazeh's ruffled feelings called
for smoothing, crossed the room to engage him in conversation, so
I was left practically alone with the strange individual. More
or less in a spirit of defiance of his claim to such distinction,
I sat down on a cushion beside him.