he magic which had so instantly entranced her.

She looked down into the village and could see its extent, precisely how
it was placed in the Sahara, in what relation exactly it stood to the
mountain ranges, to the palm groves and the arid, sunburnt tracts, where
its life centred and where it tailed away into suburban edges not unlike
the ragged edges of worn garments, where it was idle and frivolous,
where busy and sedulous. She realised for the first time that there
were two distinct layers of life in Beni-Mora--the life of the streets,
courts, gardens and market-place, and above it the life of the roofs.
Both were now spread out before her, and the latter, in its domestic
intimacy, interested and charmed her. She saw upon the roofs the
children playing with little dogs, goats, fowls, mothers in rags of
gaudy colours stirring the barley for cous-cous, shredding vegetables,
pounding coffee, stewing meat, plucking chickens, bending over bowls
from which rose the steam of soup; small girls, seated in dusty corners,
solemnly winding wool on sticks, and pausing, now and then, to squeak to
distant members of the home circle, or to smell at flowers laid beside
them as solace to their industry. An old grandmother rocked and kissed
a naked baby with a pot belly. A big grey rat stole from a rubbish heap
close by her, flitted across the sunlit space, and disappeared into a
cranny. Pigeons circled above the home activities, delicate lovers of
the air, wandered among the palm tops, returned and fearlessly alighted
on the brown earth parapets, strutting hither and thither and making
their perpetual, characteristic motion of the head, half nod, half
genuflection. Veiled girls promenaded to take the evening cool, folding
their arms beneath their flowing draperies, and chattering to one
another in voices that Domini could not hear. More close at hand certain
roofs in the dancers' street revealed luxurious sofas on which painted
houris were lolling in sinuous attitudes, or were posed with a stiffness
of idols, little tables set with coffee cups, others round which were
gathered Zouaves intent on card games, but ever ready to pause for a
caress or for some jesting absurdity with the women who squatted beside
them. Some men, dressed like girls, went to and fro, serving the dancers
with sweetmeats and with cigarettes, their beards flowing down with a
grotesque effect over their dresses of embroidered muslin, their hairy
arms emerging from