The man's air of indifference and apparently unstudied insolence suggested he was some one well used to authority.

Presuming on the one thing that I felt quite sure of by that time--my privileged position as a guest--I stayed, to try to draw him out.

I tried to open up conversation with him with English, French, and finally lame Arabic.

He took no apparent notice of the French and English, but he smiled sarcastically at my efforts with his own tongue.
Except that he moved his lips he made no answer but went on clicking the beads of a splendid amber rosary.
Ben Nazir, seeming to think that Anazeh's ruffled feelings called for smoothing, crossed the room to engage him in conversation, so I was left practically alone with the strange individual.

More or less in a spirit of defiance of his claim to such distinction, I sat down on a cushion beside him.
He was a peculiar-looking man.