he
traveller.

For it was this dance of the _ennui_ of the East which raised up in him
this obvious battle, which drove his secret into the illumination of
the hanging lamps and gave it to a woman, who felt half confused, half
ashamed at possessing it, and yet could not cast it away.

If they both lived on, without speaking or meeting, for another half
century, Domini could never know the shape of the devil in this man, the
light of the smile upon its face.

The dancing woman had observed him, and presently she began slowly to
wriggle towards him between the rows of Arabs, fixing her eyes upon
him and parting her scarlet lips in a greedy smile. As she came on the
stranger evidently began to realise that he was her bourne. He had been
leaning forward, but when she approached, waving her red hands, shaking
her prominent breasts, and violently jerking her stomach, he sat
straight up, and then, as if instinctively trying to get away from her,
pressed back against the wall, hiding the painting of the Ouled Nail and
the French soldier. A dark flush rose on his face and even flooded
his forehead to his low-growing hair. His eyes were full of a piteous
anxiety and discomfort, and he glanced almost guiltily to right and
left of him as if he expected the hooded Arab spectators to condemn
his presence there now that the dancer drew their attention to it. The
dancer noticed his confusion and seemed pleased by it, and moved to more
energetic demonstrations of her art. She lifted her arms above her
head, half closed her eyes, assumed an expression of languid ecstasy and
slowly shuddered. Then, bending backward, she nearly touched the floor,
swung round, still bending, and showed the long curve of her bare throat
to the stranger, while the girls, huddled on the bench by the musicians,
suddenly roused themselves and joined their voices in a shrill and
prolonged twitter. The Arabs did not smile, but the deepness of their
attention seemed to increase like a cloud growing darker. All the
luminous eyes in the room were steadily fixed upon the man leaning
back against the hideous picture on the wall and the gaudy siren curved
almost into an arch before him. The musicians blew their hautboys and
beat their tomtoms more violently, and all things, Domini thought,
were filled with a sense of climax. She felt as if the room, all the
inanimate objects, and all the animate figures in it, were instruments
of an orchestra, and as if each individu