hanging sleeves of silk. A negro boy sat holding a
tomtom between his bare knees and beating it with supple hands, and a
Jewess performed the stomach dance, waving two handkerchiefs stained red
and purple, and singing in a loud and barbarous contralto voice which
Domini could hear but very faintly. The card-players stopped their game
and watched her, and Domini watched too. For the first time, and from
this immense height, she saw this universal dance of the east; the
doll-like figure, fantastically dwarfed, waving its tiny hands,
wriggling its minute body, turning about like a little top, strutting
and bending, while the soldiers--small almost from here as toys taken
out of a box--assumed attitudes of deep attention as they leaned upon
the card-table, stretching out their legs enveloped in balloon-like
trousers.

Domini thought of the recruits, now, no doubt, undergoing elsewhere
their initiation. For a moment she seemed to see their coarse peasant
faces rigid with surprise, their hanging jaws, their childish, and yet
sensual, round eyes. Notre Dame de la Garde must seem very far away from
them now.

With that thought she looked quickly away from the Jewess and the
soldiers. She felt a sudden need of something more nearly in relation
with her inner self. She was almost angry as she realised how deep had
been her momentary interest in a scene suggestive of a license which was
surely unattractive to her. Yet was it unattractive? She scarcely
knew. But she knew that it had kindled in her a sudden and very strong
curiosity, even a vague, momentary desire that she had been born in some
tent of the Ouled Nails--no, that was impossible. She had not felt such
a desire even for an instant. She looked towards the thickets of the
palms, towards the mountains full of changing, exquisite colours,
towards the desert. And at once the dream began to return, and she felt
as if hands slipped under her heart and uplifted it.

What depths and heights were within her, what deep, dark valleys,
and what mountain peaks! And how she travelled within herself, with
swiftness of light, with speed of the wind. What terrors of activity she
knew. Did every human being know similar terrors?

The colours everywhere deepened as day failed. The desert spirits were
at work. She thought of Count Anteoni again, and resolved to go round to
the other side of the tower. As she moved to do this she heard once more
the shifting of a foot on the plaster floo