smiled.

"You've been very good to-day," she said.

"I am always good, Madame. I am of a serious disposition. Not one keeps
Ramadan as I do."

"I am sure of it. Go downstairs and wait for me under the arcade."

Batouch's large face became suddenly a rendezvous of all the gaieties.

"Madame is coming out to-night?"

"Presently. Be in the arcade."

He swept away with the ample magnificence of joyous bearing and movement
that was like a loud Te Deum.

"Suzanne! Suzanne!"

Domini had finished her coffee.

"Mam'zelle!" answered Suzanne, appearing.

"Would you like to come out with me to-night?"

"Mam'zelle is going out?"

"Yes, to see the village by night."

Suzanne looked irresolute. Craven fear and curiosity fought a battle
within her, as was evident by the expressions that came and went in her
face before she answered.

"Shall we not be murdered, Mam'zelle, and are there interesting things
to see?"

"There are interesting things to see--dancers, singers, keef smokers.
But if you are afraid don't come."

"Dancers, Mam'zelle! But the Arabs carry knives. And is there singing?
I--I should not like Mam'zelle to go without me. But----"

"Come and protect me from the knives then. Bring my jacket--any one. I
don't suppose I shall put it on."

As she spoke the distant tomtoms began. Suzanne started nervously and
looked at Domini with sincere apprehension.

"We had better not go, Mam'zelle. It is not safe out here. Men who make
a noise like that would not respect us."

"I like it."

"That sound? But it is always the same and there is no music in it."

"Perhaps there is more in it than music. The jacket?"

Suzanne went gingerly to fetch it. The faint cry of the African hautboy
rose up above the tomtoms. The evening _fete_ was beginning. To-night
Domini felt that she must go to the distant music and learn to
understand its meaning, not only for herself, but for those who made it
and danced to it night after night. It stirred her imagination, and
made her in love with mystery, and anxious at least to steal to the very
threshold of the barbarous world. Did it stir those who had had it in
their ears ever since they were naked, sunburned babies rolling in the
hot sun of the Sahara? Could it seem as ordinary to them as the cold
uproar of the piano-organ to the urchins of Whitechapel, or the whine
of the fiddle to the peasants of Touraine where Suzanne was born? She
wanted to know. Suzanne returned with the