moment, listening to
the heavy sound of his tread on the wooden stairs. She frowned till her
thick eyebrows nearly met and the corners of her lips turned down. Then
she followed slowly. When she was on the stairs and the footsteps died
away below her she fully realised that for the first time in her life a
man had insulted her. Her face felt suddenly very hot, and her lips very
dry, and she longed to use her physical strength in a way not wholly
feminine. In the hall, among the shrouded furniture, she met the smiling
doorkeeper. She stopped.

"Did the gentleman who has just gone out give you his card?" she said
abruptly.

The Arab assumed a fawning, servile expression.

"No, Madame, but he is a very good gentleman, and I know well that
Monsieur the Count--"

Domini cut him short.

"Of what nationality is he?"

"Monsieur the Count, Madame?"

"No, no."

"The gentleman? I do not know. But he can speak Arabic. Oh, he is a very
nice--"

"Bon soir," said Domini, giving him a franc.

When she was out on the road in front of the hotel she saw the stranger
striding along in the distance at the tail of the negro procession. The
dust stirred up by the dancers whirled about him. Several small negroes
skipped round him, doubtless making eager demands upon his generosity.
He seemed to take no notice of them, and as she watched him Domini
was reminded of his retreat from the praying Arab in the desert that
morning.

"Is he afraid of women as he is afraid of prayer?" she thought, and
suddenly the sense of humiliation and anger left her, and was succeeded
by a powerful curiosity such as she had never felt before about anyone.
She realised that this curiosity had dawned in her almost at the first
moment when she saw the stranger, and had been growing ever since. One
circumstance after another had increased it till now it was definite,
concrete. She wondered that she did not feel ashamed of such a feeling
so unusual in her, and surely unworthy, like a prying thing. Of all her
old indifference that side which confronted people had always been the
most sturdy, the most solidly built. Without affectation she had been a
profoundly incurious woman as to the lives and the concerns of others,
even of those whom she knew best and was supposed to care for most.
Her nature had been essentially languid in human intercourse. The
excitements, troubles, even the passions of others had generally stirred
her no more than a distant puppet-