dim court of this lonely house had not
looked at her, did not appear to know that she was there. Hadj had
caught the aroma of their meditations with the perfume of the incense,
for his eyes had lost their mischief and become gloomily profound, as
if they stared on bygone centuries or watched a far-off future. Even
the child began to look elderly, and worn as with fastings and with
watchings. As the fumes perpetually ascended from the red-hot coals of
the brazier the sharp smell of the perfume grew stronger. There was in
it something provocative and exciting that was like a sound, and
Domini marvelled that the four men who crouched over it and drank it in
perpetually could be unaffected by its influence when she, who was
at some distance from it, felt dawning on her desires of movement,
of action, almost a physical necessity to get up and do something
extraordinary, absurd or passionate, such as she had never done or
dreamed of till this moment.

A low growl like that of a wild beast broke the silence. Domini did not
know at first whence it came. She stared at the four men, but they were
all gazing vacantly into the brazier, their naked arms dropping to the
floor. She glanced at Hadj. He was delicately taking a cigarette paper
from a little case. The child--no, it was absurd even to think of a
child emitting such a sound.

Someone growled again more fiercely, and this time Domini saw that it
was the palest of the ascetic-looking youths. He shook back his long
hair, rose to his feet with a bound, and moving into the centre of the
court gazed ferociously at his companions. As if in obedience to the
glance, two of them stretched their arms backwards, found two tomtoms,
and began to beat them loudly and monotonously. The young ascetic bowed
to the tomtoms, dropping his lower jaw and jumping on his bare feet. He
bowed again as if saluting a fetish, and again and again. Ceaselessly he
bowed to the tomtoms, always jumping softly from the pavement. His long
hair fell over his face and back upon his shoulders with a monotonous
regularity that imitated the tomtoms, as if he strove to mould his life
in accord with the fetish to which he offered adoration. Flecks of foam
appeared upon his lips, and the asceticism in his eyes changed to a
bestial glare. His whole body was involved in a long and snake-like
undulation, above which his hair flew to and fro. Presently the second
youth, moving reverently like a priest about the altar, st