A shade passed over the girl's forehead.
"Yes, I am free," she said, almost bitterly.
I looked at Tanit-Zerga more closely. For the first time I realized
that she was beautiful. Her hair, which she wore falling over her
shoulders, was not so much curly as it was gently waving. Her features
were of remarkable fineness: the nose very straight, a small mouth
with delicate lips, a strong chin. She was not black, but copper
colored. Her slender graceful body had nothing in common with the
disgusting thick sausages which the carefully cared for bodies of the
blacks become.
A large circle of copper made a heavy decoration around her forehead
and hair. She had four bracelets, still heavier, on her wrists and
anklets, and, for clothing, a green silk tunic, slashed in points,
braided with gold. Green, bronze, gold.
"You are a Sonrhaï, Tanit-Zerga?" I asked gently.
She replied with almost ferocious pride: "I am a Sonrhaï."
"Strange little thing," I thought.
Evidently this was a subject on which Tanit-Zerga did not intend the
conversation to turn. I recalled how, almost painfully, she had
pronounced that "they," when she had told me how they had driven away
King Hiram.
"I am a Sonrhaï," she repeated. "I was born at Gâo, on the Niger, the
ancient Sonrhaï capital. My fathers reigned over the great Mandingue
Empire. You need not scorn me because I am here as a slave."
In a ray of sunlight, Galé, seated on his little haunches, washed his
shining mustaches with his forepaws; and King Hiram, stretched out on
the mat, groaned plaintively in his sleep.
"He is dreaming," said Tanit-Zerga, a finger on her lips.
There was a moment of silence. Then she said: "You must be hungry. And I do not think that you will want to eat with
the others."
I did not answer.
"You must eat," she continued. "If you like, I will go get something
to eat for you and me. I will bring King Hiram's and Galé's dinner
here, too. When you are sad, you should not stay alone."
And the little green and gold fairy vanished, without waiting for my
answer.
That was how my friendship with Tanit-Zerga began. Each morning she
came to my room with the two beasts. She rarely spoke to me of
Antinea, and when she did, it was always indirectly. The question that
she saw ceaselessly hovering on my lips seemed to be unbearable to
her, and I felt her avoiding all the subjects towards which I, myself,
dared not direct the conversation.
To make sure of avoiding them, she prattled, prattled, prattled, like
a nervous little parokeet.