ut calling up in his mind, or heart,
a violence of thought or of feeling.

"You think it--you think there would be peace out there, far away in the
desert?" he said, and his face relaxed slightly, as if in obedience to
some thought not wholly sad.

"It may be fanciful," she replied. "But I think there must. Surely
Nature has not a lying face."

He was still gazing towards the south, from which the night was slowly
emerging, a traveller through a mist of blue. He seemed to be held
fascinated by the desert which was fading away gently, like a mystery
which had drawn near to the light of revelation, but which was now
slipping back into an underworld of magic. He bent forward as one who
watches a departure in which he longs to share, and Domini felt sure
that he had forgotten her. She felt, too, that this man was gripped by
the desert influence more fiercely even than she was, and that he must
have a stronger imagination, a greater force of projection even than she
had. Where she bore a taper he lifted a blazing torch.

A roar of drums rose up immediately beneath them. From the negro village
emerged a ragged procession of thick-lipped men, and singing, capering
women tricked out in scarlet and yellow shawls, headed by a male dancer
clad in the skins of jackals, and decorated with mirrors, camels' skulls
and chains of animals' teeth. He shouted and leaped, rolled his bulging
eyes, and protruded a fluttering tongue. The dust curled up round his
stamping, naked feet.

"Yah-ah-la! Yah-ah-la!"

The howling chorus came up to the tower, with a clash of enormous
castanets, and of poles beaten rhythmically together.

"Yi-yi-yi-yi!" went the shrill voices of the women.

The cloud of dust increased, enveloping the lower part of the
procession, till the black heads and waving arms emerged as if from a
maelstrom. The thunder of the drums was like the thunder of a cataract
in which the singers, disappearing towards the village, seemed to be
swept away.

The man at Domini's side raised himself up with a jerk, and all the
former fierce timidity and consciousness came back to his face. He
turned round, pulled open the door behind him, and took off his hat.

"Excuse me, Madame," he said. "Bon soir!"

"I am coming too," Domini answered.

He looked uncomfortable and anxious, hesitated, then, as if driven to do
it in spite of himself, plunged downward through the narrow doorway of
the tower into the darkness. Domini waited for a