CHAPTER XIII
THE VOICES OF THE NIGHT
The tables were fairly well filled; the European element in Tangiers was amusing itself in the only way it knew. For there is nothing in particular to do in Tangiers, after the mail boat has come in and the home newspapers have been hungrily devoured—every blessed line of them, even to the advertisements.
There are, of course, pig-stickings and picnics; but after a while these pall upon one; and the small talk of the exiles is not exhilarating after one has learned all the noisome details that led up to this or that person's selection of Tangiers as a permanent residence.
And when one is tired, the tables are always open in the big, gilded salon—open and dispensing their opiate of feverish excitement that deadens one's sense of degradation and one's heartache.
O'Rourke strolled among the tables, watching the play, but without any great interest; his mind was filled with speculation about the Consul-General and the Countess of Seyn-Altberg; he was recalling the little scene out there on the piazza, and wondering what it all meant.
One thing was very evident to him,—that Senet was desperately and hopelessly in love with the Countess. But the whole affair was something of an enigma, and O'Rourke found himself vainly racking his brains to recall something that he had once heard, and forgotten, in reference to the
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