to-night!" Domini called out.

"Yes, Madame, to-night. The vie of Madame is there in the sand to-night.
Je la vois, je la vois. C'est la dans le sable to-night."

The moonlight showed the wound on his face. Suzanne uttered a cry and
hid her eyes with her hands. They went on towards the trees. Hadj walked
with hesitation.

"How loud the music is getting," Domini said to him.

"It will deafen Madame's ears if she gets nearer," said Hadj, eagerly.
"And the dancers are not for Madame. For the Arabs, yes, but for a great
lady of the most respectable England! Madame will be red with disgust,
with anger. Madame will have _mal-au-coeur_."

Batouch began to look like an idol on whose large face the artificer had
carved an expression of savage ferocity.

"Madame is my client," he said fiercely. "Madame trusts in me."

Hadj laughed with a snarl:

"He who smokes the keef is like a Mehari with a swollen tongue," he
rejoined.

The poet looked as if he were going to spring upon his cousin, but he
restrained himself and a slow, malignant smile curled about his thick
lips like a snake.

"I shall show to Madame a dancer who is modest, who is beautiful,
Hadj-ben-Ibrahim," he said softly.

"Fatma is sick," said Hadj, quickly.

"It will not be Fatma."

Hadj began suddenly to gesticulate with his thin, delicate hands and to
look fiercely excited.

"Halima is at the Fontaine Chaude," he cried.

"Keltoum will be there."

"She will not. Her foot is sick. She cannot dance. For a week she will
not dance. I know it."

"And--Irena? Is she sick? Is she at the Hammam Salahine?"

Hadj's countenance fell. He looked at his cousin sideways, always
showing his teeth.

"Do you not know, Hadj-ben-Ibrahim?"

"_Ana ma 'audi ma nek oul lek!_"[*] growled Hadj in his throat.

[*] "I have nothing to say to you."

They had reached the end of the little street. The whiteness of the
great road which stretched straight through the oasis into the desert
lay before them, with the statue of Cardinal Lavigerie staring down it
in the night. At right angles was the street of the dancers, narrow,
bounded with the low white houses of the ouleds, twinkling with starry
lights, humming with voices, throbbing with the clashing music that
poured from the rival _cafes maures_, thronged with the white figures
of the desert men, strolling slowly, softly as panthers up and down. The
moonlight was growing brighter, as if invisible hands began to fan