nced at him with a
sort of wondering envy.

"And I want you to share in my little distribution," he added. "And
you, Monsieur, if you don't mind. There are moments when--Open the gate,
Smain!"

His ardour was infectious and Domini felt stirred by it to a sudden
sense of the joy of life. She looked at Androvsky, to include him in
the rigour of gaiety which swept from the Count to her, and found him
staring apprehensively at the Count, who was now loosening the string
of the bag. Smain had reached the gate. He lifted the bar of wood and
opened it. Instantly a crowd of dark faces and turbaned heads were
thrust through the tall aperture, a multitude of dusky hands fluttered
frantically, and the cry of eager voices, saluting, begging, calling
down blessings, relating troubles, shrieking wants, proclaiming virtues
and necessities, rose into an almost deafening uproar. But not a
foot was lifted over the lintel to press the sunlit sand. The Count's
pensioners might be clamorous, but they knew what they might not do. As
he saw them the wrinkles in his face deepened and his fingers quickened
to achieve their purpose.

"My pensioners are very hungry to-day, and, as you see, they don't mind
saying so. Hark at Bel Cassem!"

The tomtom and the shriek that went with it made it a fierce crescendo.

"That means he is starving--the old hypocrite! Aren't they like the
wolves in your Russia, Monsieur? But we must feed them. We mustn't let
them devour our Beni-Mora. That's it!"

He threw the string on to the sand, plunged his hand into the bag and
brought it out full of copper coins. The mouths opened wider, the hands
waved more frantically, and all the dark eyes gleamed with the light of
greed.

"Will you help me?" he said to Domini.

"Of course. What fun!"

Her eyes were gleaming too, but with the dancing fires of a gay impulse
of generosity which made her wish that the bag contained her money. He
filled her hands with coins.

"Choose whom you will. And now, Monsieur!"

For the moment he was so boyishly concentrated on the immediate present
that he had ceased to observe whether the whim of others jumped with
his own. Otherwise he must have been struck by Androvsky's marked
discomfort, which indeed almost amounted to agitation. The sight of the
throng of Arabs at the gateway, the clamour of their voices, evidently
roused within him something akin to fear. He looked at them with
distaste, and had drawn back several steps upon