the
soul of Creation dancing before an ark. The tomtoms accompanied it
with an irregular but rhythmical roar which Domini thought was like the
deep-voiced shouting of squadrons of fighting men.

Irena looked wearily at the knives. Her expression had not changed, and
Domini was amazed at her indifference. The eyes of everyone in the
room were fixed upon her. Even Suzanne began to be less virginal in
appearance under the influence of this desert song of triumph. Domini
did not let her eyes stray any more towards the stranger. For the moment
indeed she had forgotten him. Her attention was fastened upon the thin,
consumptive-looking creature who was staring at the two knives laid upon
the table. When the great tune had been played right through once, and a
passionate roll of tomtoms announced its repetition, Irena suddenly shot
out her tiny arms, brought her hands down on the knives, seized them and
sprang to her feet. She had passed from lassitude to vivid energy with
an abruptness that was almost demoniacal, and to an energy with which
both mind and body seemed to blaze. Then, as the hautboys screamed out
the tune once more, she held the knives above her head and danced.

Irena was not an Ouled Nail. She was a Kabyle woman born in the
mountains of Djurdjura, not far from the village of Tamouda. As a child
she had lived in one of those chimneyless and windowless mud cottages
with red tiled roofs which are so characteristic a feature of La Grande
Kabylie. She had climbed barefoot the savage hills, or descended into
the gorges yellow with the broom plant and dipped her brown toes in the
waters of the Sebaou. How had she drifted so far from the sharp spurs
of her native hills and from the ruddy-haired, blue-eyed people of her
tribe? Possibly she had sinned, as the Kabyle women often sin, and
fled from the wrath that she would understand, and that all her fierce
bravery could not hope to conquer. Or perhaps with her Kabyle blood,
itself a brew composed of various strains, Greek, Roman, as well as
Berber, were mingling some drops drawn from desert sources, which had
manifested themselves physically in her dark hair, mentally in a nomadic
instinct which had forbidden her to rest among the beauties of Ait
Ouaguennoun, whose legendary charm she did not possess. There was the
look of an exile in her face, a weariness that dreamed, perhaps, of
distant things. But now that she danced that fled, and the gleam of
flame-lit steel was i