tation. Monsieur
Helmuth was polite enough to escort me through the village. Mon Dieu,
Mam'zelle, I said to myself, 'Anything might occur here.'"

"Anything! What do you mean?"

But Suzanne did not seem to know. She only made her figure look more
tense than ever, tucked in her round little chin, which was dimpled and
unmeaning, and said:

"Who knows, Mam'zelle? This village is dull, that is true, but it is
odd. One does not find oneself in such places every day."

Domini could not help laughing at these Delphic utterances, but she went
downstairs thoughtfully. She knew Suzanne's practical spirit. Till now
the maid had never shown any capacity of imagination. Beni-Mora was
certainly beginning to mould her nature into a slightly different shape.
And Domini seemed to see an Eastern potter at work, squatting in the sun
and with long and delicate fingers changing the outline of the statuette
of a woman, modifying a curve here, an angle there, till the clay began
to show another woman, but with, as it were, the shadow of the former
one lurking behind the new personality.

The stranger was not at dinner. His table was laid and Domini sat
expecting each moment to hear the shuffling tread of his heavy boots on
the wooden floor. When he did not come she thought she was glad. After
dinner she spoke for a moment to the priest and then went upstairs to
the verandah to take coffee. She found Batouch there. He had renounced
his determined air, and his _cafe-au-lait_ countenance and huge body
expressed enduring pathos, as of an injured, patient creature laid out
for the trampling of Domini's cruel feet.

"Well?" she said, sitting down by the basket table.

"Well, Madame?"

He sighed and looked on the ground, lifted one white-socked foot,
removed its yellow slipper, shook out a tiny stone from the slipper and
put it on again, slowly, gracefully and very sadly. Then he pulled the
white sock up with both hands and glanced at Domini out of the corners
of his eyes.

"What's the matter?"

"Madame does not care to see the dances of Beni-Mora, to hear the music,
to listen to the story-teller, to enter the cafe of El Hadj where
Achmed sings to the keef smokers, or to witness the beautiful religious
ecstasies of the dervishes from Oumach. Therefore I come to bid Madame
respectfully goodnight and to take my departure."

He threw his burnous over his left shoulder with a sudden gesture of
despair that was full of exaggeration. Domini