between them and vanished
into the golden dream beyond.

"Oh, Smain, how you must love this garden!" she said.

A sort of ecstasy was waking within her. The pure air, the caressing
warmth, the enchanted stillness and privacy of this domain touched her
soul and body like the hands of a saint with power to bless her.

"I could live here for ever," she added, "without once wishing to go out
into the world."

Smain looked drowsily pleased.

"We are coming to the centre of the garden," he said, as they passed
over a palm-wood bridge beneath which a stream glided under the red
petals of geraniums.

The tongues of flame were left behind. Green darkness closed in upon
them and the sand beneath their feet looked blanched. The sense of
mystery increased, for the trees were enormous and grew densely here.
Pine needles lay upon the ground, and there was a stirring of sudden
wind far up above their heads in the tree-tops.

"This is the part of the garden that Monsieur the Count loves," said
Smain. "He comes here every day."

"What is that?" said Domini, suddenly stopping on the pale sand.

A thin and remote sound stole to them down the alley, clear and frail as
the note of a night bird.

"It is Larbi playing upon the flute. He is in love. That is why he plays
when he ought to be watering the flowers and raking out the sand."

The distant love-song of the flute seemed to Domini the last touch of
enchantment making this indeed a wonderland. She could not move, and
held up her hands to stay the feet of Smain, who was quite content
to wait. Never before had she heard any music that seemed to mean and
suggest so much to her as this African tune played by an enamoured
gardener. Queer and uncouth as it was, distorted with ornaments and
tricked out with abrupt runs, exquisitely unnecessary grace notes,
and sudden twitterings prolonged till a strange and frivolous Eternity
tripped in to banish Time, it grasped Domini's fancy and laid a spell
upon her imagination. For it sounded as naively sincere as the song of a
bird, and as if the heart from which it flowed were like the heart of
a child, a place of revelation, not of concealment. The sun made men
careless here. They opened their windows to it, and one could see into
the warm and glowing rooms. Domini looked at the gentle Arab youth
beside her, already twice married and twice divorced. She listened to
Larbi's unending song of love. And she said to herself, "These people,
unc