at
had beset his nearly ended life. Poor, horrible old man! Androvsky was
closer to him than she was, but did not seem to notice him. Once she had
seen him she could not take her eyes from him. His perpetual gesture,
his perpetual shriek, became abominable to her in the midst of the
bowing bodies and the humming voices of prayer. Each time he struck
at the mosque and uttered his piercing cry she seemed to hear an oath
spoken in a sanctuary. She longed to stop him. This one blasphemer began
to destroy for her the mystic atmosphere created by the multitudes of
adorers, and at last she could no longer endure his reiterated enmity.

She touched Androvsky's arm. He started and looked at her.

"That old man," she whispered. "Can't you speak to him?"

Androvsky glanced at him for the first time.

"Speak to him, Madame? Why?"

"He--he's horrible!"

She felt a sudden disinclination to tell Androvsky why the old man was
horrible to her.

"What do you wish me to say to him?"

"I thought perhaps you might be able to stop him from doing that."

Androvsky bent down and spoke to the old man in Arabic.

He shot out his arms and reiterated his trembling shriek. It pierced the
sound of prayer as lightning pierces cloud.

Domini got up quickly.

"I can't bear it," she said, still in a whisper. "It's as if he were
cursing God."

Androvsky looked at the old man again, this time with profound
attention.

"Isn't it?" she said. "Isn't it as if he were cursing God while the
whole world worshipped? And that one cry of hatred seems louder than the
praises of the whole world."

"We can't stop it."

Something in his voice made her say abruptly:

"Do you wish to stop it?"

He did not answer. The old man struck at the mosque and shrieked. Domini
shuddered.

"I can't stay here," she said.

At this moment Mustapha appeared, followed by the guardian of the
mosque, who carried two pairs of tattered slippers.

"Monsieur and Madame must take off their boots. Then I will show the
mosque."

Domini put on the slippers hastily, and went into the mosque without
waiting to see whether Androvsky was following. And the old man's
furious cry pursued her through the doorway.

Within there was space and darkness. The darkness seemed to be praying.
Vistas of yellowish-white arches stretched away in front, to right and
left. On the floor, covered with matting, quantities of shrouded figures
knelt and swayed, stood up suddenly, knelt agai