the tower dancing upon the roof
in the sunset. Distance and light had indeed transformed her. Under the
lamps she was the embodiment of all that was coarse and greasy. Even the
pitiful slenderness of Irena seemed attractive when compared with her
billowing charms, which she kept in a continual commotion that was
almost terrifying.

"Hadj is nearly dead with fear," whispered Batouch, complacently.
Domini's lips curled.

"Does not Madame think Irena beautiful as the moon on the waters of the
Oued Beni-Mora?"

"Indeed I don't," she replied bluntly. "And I think a man who can be
afraid of such a little thing must be afraid of the children in the
street."

"Little! But Irena is tall as a female palm in Ourlana."

"Tall!"

Domini looked at her again more carefully, and saw that Batouch spoke
the truth. Irena was unusually tall, but her excessive narrowness, her
tiny bones, and the delicate way in which she held herself deceived the
eye and gave her a little appearance.

"So she is; but who could be afraid of her? Why, I could pick her up and
throw her over that moon of yours."

"Madame is strong. Madame is like the lioness. But Irena is the most
terrible girl in all Beni-Mora if she loves or if she is angry, the most
terrible in all the Sahara."

Domini laughed.

"Madame does not know her," said Batouch, imperturbably. "But Madame
can ask the Arabs. Many of the dancers of Beni-Mora are murdered, each
season two or three. But no man would try to murder Irena. No man would
dare."

The poet's calm and unimpassioned way of alluding to the most horrible
crimes as if they were perfectly natural, and in no way to be condemned
or wondered at, amazed Domini even more than his statement about Irena.

"Why do they murder the dancers?" she asked quickly.

"For their jewels. At night, in those little rooms with the balconies
which Madame has seen, it is easy. You enter in to sleep there. You
close your eyes, you breathe gently and a little loud. The woman hears.
She is not afraid. She sleeps. She dreams. Her throat is like that"--he
threw back his head, exposing his great neck. "Just before dawn you draw
your knife from your burnous. You bend down. You cut the throat without
noise. You take the jewels, the money from the box by the bed. You
go down quietly with bare feet. No one is on the stair. You unbar the
door--and there before you is the great hiding-place."

"The great hiding-place!"

"The desert, Madame." He s