meant to leave. He sat mournful and passive in a basket chair, his sling
making a patch of white in the gloom. The truth was that he suffered from a
disability not uncommon among certain natures: he did not know how to go.
He could arrive with ease, but he was no expert at vanishing. Audrey was
troubled. As suited her age and condition, she was apt to feel the
responsibility of the whole universe. She knew that she was responsible for
Musa's accident, and now she was beginning to be aware that she was
responsible for his future as well. She was sure that he needed
encouragement and guidance. She pictured him with his fiddle under his
chin, masterful, confident, miraculous, throwing a spell over everyone
within earshot. But actually she saw him listless and vanquished in the
basket chair, and she perceived that only a strongly influential and
determined woman, such as herself, could save him from disaster. No man
could do it. His tears had shaken her. She was willing to make allowances
for a foreigner, but she had never seen a man cry before, and the spectacle
was very disturbing. It inspired her with a fear that even she could not be
the salvation of Musa.

"I demanded something of you," she said, after lowering the wick of the
lamp to exactly the right point, and staring at it for a greater length of
time than was necessary or even seemly. She spoke French, and as she
listened to her French accent she heard that it was good.

"I am done for!" came the mournful voice of Musa out of the obscurity
behind the lamp.

"What! You are done for? But you know what the doctor said. He said no bone
was broken. Only a little strain, and the pain from your----" Admirable
though her French accent was, she could not think of the French word for
"funny-bone." Indeed she had never learnt it. So she said it in English.