dance that it did not occur to Domini at first that she was imitating
the Ouled Nail who had laid her greasy head upon the stranger's knees.
The abandonment of her performance was so great that it was difficult to
remember its money value to her and to Tahar, the fair Kabyle. Only when
she was actually opposite to them and stayed there, still performing her
shuddering dance, still holding the daggers above her head, did Domini
realise that those half-closed, passionate eyes had marked the stranger
woman, and that she must add one to the stream of golden coins. She
took out her purse but did not give the money at once. With the pitiless
scrutiny of her sex she noticed all the dancer's disabilities. She
was certainly young, but she was very worn. Her mouth drooped. At the
corners of her eyes there were tiny lines tending downward. Her forehead
had what Domini secretly called a martyred look. Nevertheless, she was
savage and triumphant. Her thin body suggested force; the way she held
herself consuming passion. Even so near at hand, even while she was
pausing for money, and while her eyes were, doubtless, furtively reading
Domini, she shed round her a powerful atmosphere, which stirred the
blood, and made the heart leap, and created longing for unknown and
violent things. As Domini watched her she felt that Irena must have
lived at moments magnificently, that despite her almost shattered
condition and permanent weariness--only cast aside for the moment of the
dance--she must have known intense joys, that so long as she lived she
would possess the capacity for knowing them again. There was something
burning within her that would burn on so long as she was alive, a spark
of nature that was eternally red hot. It was that spark which made her
the idol of the Arabs and shed a light of beauty through her haggard
frame.

The spirit blazed.

Domini put her hand at last into her purse and took out a piece of gold.
She was just going to give it to Irena when the white bundle that was
Hadj made a sudden, though slight, movement, as if the thing inside it
had shivered. Irena noticed it with her half-closed eyes. Domini leaned
forward and held out the money, then drew back startled. Irena had
changed her posture abruptly. Instead of keeping her head thrown back
and exposing her long throat, she lifted it, shot it forward. Her meagre
bosom almost disappeared as she bent over. Her arms fell to her sides.
Her eyes opened wide and became