How long did it take to become sophisticated as a camel driver? Could he write realism for the Ouled girls to play, since they were indeed realists too, though their ambition was frankly for the Many? And then, remembering his first talk with the poet and the painter in the smoking-room of the "Duumvir," when they had all three posed for the statuesque French lady and for one another, airing themselves and their nonsense about Art, the prostrate Laurence groaned in sickened revulsion. It was that ancient bit of naïveté, "For the Few," that brought this sound of nausea from him; and again his whispered laughter competed with the buzzing of the tiny Biskra flies about his chandelier. For, in his misery, he had at last asked himself a sardonic and distinctly clarifying question: What "Few" had he written for? Who actually were those Few? In the name of heaven, what did he care for Macklyn!
A few minutes later he laughed once more the same self-cauterizing and voiceless laugh, for he recalled his grandiloquent bitterness of yesterday when he had told the faithless lady that he would have given her the money to establish Hyacinthe as an impresario, if she had asked him for it. He had been gloomily pleased with himself at the moment, as he
