CHAPTER 14The African was a handsome man: no longer young, perhaps, but dark, tall, exotically unfamiliar in his loose, flowing robes. And more than this, intelligence burned deeply, enduringly in his shining brown eyes as they smiled understandingly into mine.
I said breathlessly, “May I see it?”
He got up at once and went to a trunk, the gentle weaving of the floor quite undisturbing to him. No wonder. So far as I could tell, he lived on this ship, anchored these several weeks in the port of Bruges. And this tented chamber was his house, his study, his hall and his sleeping quarters. I felt no embarrassment at that. It was his learning which excited me, not his manliness.
And yet there was something very beguiling, almost seductive — at least, I imagined they were seductive, though I
