The Bey came toward them half smiling and stayed for a short while, then called Isa away for a talk in his study, a room set far back from the street and so dark that the Bey put on the lights. Isa looked at him anxiously and read a deep concern in his eyes. He asked himself whether it had anything to do with him or was merely the result of recent events: looking up, he noticed that a picture of the Bey in his judicial uniform had taken the traditional place of the King.

“How are things?” the Bey asked.

“I’ll start afresh,” Isa replied, pretending to make light of things. He told the Bey about his unhappy situation, as he saw it.

The Bey thought for a while. “You won’t find things easy,” he said.

“I know that, but I’m not discouraged.”

The Bey looked extremely serious. “To tell you the truth,” he confessed, “your news didn’t come to me as a surprise.”

“Did the chairman of the committee tell you, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Wouldn’t it have been possible…”

“Certainly not. It’s true he’s a friend, but the committee’s more powerful than the chairman. And everyone’s afraid.”

“In any case,” Isa said bitterly, “what’s happened has happened. Let’s think about the future.”

“That’s the best thing you can do.”

“I’ve spoken to Salwa about it,” said Isa, taking on the unknown.

“Salwa! Did you really tell her?”

“It was only natural.”

“Everything?” the Bey asked after a pause.

Isa looked at him warily. “Of course!” he replied, rather unnerved.

“What did she say?”

“Exactly what I would have suspected,” he replied, inwardly considering all the possible options. “She’s with me at all times, good and bad.”

The Bey drummed with his fingers on the glass-covered top of the desk. “I want to be perfectly frank with you,” he said. “Marriage is now quite out of the question!”

“That’s true at the moment, of course!”

The Bey shook his head, as though, in addition to what he had stated so frankly, there was something else, something that he was keeping hidden.

“I’m a political victim,” Isa said, trying to probe deeper.

The Bey raised his bushy eyebrows without saying a word.

“It’s often been my privilege to be in this situation,” Isa continued, stung to anger.

“It wasn’t just politics this time,” the Bey retorted.

Their eyes met and they stared at each other uneasily, while a new wave of fury came over Isa. “Explain further, please,” he asked in a quavering voice.

“You know what I mean, Isa,” the Bey replied, in a voice filled with exasperation and sorrow.

“Have you any doubts about me?” Isa barked, in a tone that seemed to make even the corners of this sedate room sit up and listen.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then what are you driving at?”