full of a sharp, peering intensity.
Her vision and dreams dropped out of her. Now she was only fierce and
questioning, and horribly alert. She was looking at the white bundle. It
shifted again. She sprang upon it, showing her teeth, caught hold of it.
With a swift turn of her thin hands she tore back the hood, and out of
the bundle came Hadj's head and face livid with fear. One of the daggers
flashed and came up at him. He leaped from the seat and screamed.
Suzanne echoed his cry. Then the whole room was a turmoil of white
garments and moving limbs. In an instant everybody seemed to be leaping,
calling out, grasping, struggling. Domini tried to get up, but she was
hemmed in, and could not make a movement upward or free her arms, which
were pressed against her sides by the crowd around her. For a moment
she thought she was going to be severely hurt or suffocated. She did not
feel afraid, but only indignant, like a boy who has been struck in
the face and longs to retaliate. Someone screamed again. It was Hadj.
Suzanne was on her feet, but separated from her mistress. Batouch's
arm was round her. Domini put her hands on the bench and tried to force
herself up, violently setting her broad shoulders against the Arabs
who were towering over her and covering her head and face with their
floating garments as they strove to see the fight between Hadj and the
dancer. The heat almost stifled her, and she was suddenly aware of a
strong musky smell of perspiring humanity. She was beginning to pant
for breath when she felt two burning, hot, hard hands come down on hers,
fingers like iron catch hold of hers, go under them, drag up her hands.
She could not see who had seized her, but the life in the hands that
were on hers mingled with the life in her hands like one fluid with
another, and seemed to pass on till she felt it in her body, and had an
odd sensation as if her face had been caught in a fierce grip, and her
heart too.

Another moment and she was on her feet and out in the moonlit alley
between the little white houses. She saw the stars, and the painted
balconies crowded with painted women looking down towards the cafe
she had left and chattering in shrill voices. She saw the patrol of
Tirailleurs Indigenes marching at the double to the doorway in which the
Arabs were still struggling. Then she saw that the traveller was beside
her. She was not surprised.

"Thank you for getting me out," she said rather bluntly. "Where's my