breasts when to-morrow, at the falling
of the sun, I dance before the men of Toug--"

Ben-Abid put his hand beneath his burnous, and brought forth a bag tied
at the mouth with cord.

"They are here!" he said.

"The Jews! He has been to the Jews!" cried the desert men.

"Bring a lamp!" said Ben-Abid.

And while Irena and Boria, the Golden Date and the Lotus Flower, held
the lights, and the desert men crowded about him with the eyes of wolves
that are near to starving, he counted forth the money on the terrace at
Halima's feet. And she gazed down at the glittering pieces as one that
gazes upon a black fate.

"And now set my brothers upon the maiden," Ben-Abid said to Sadok,
gathering up the money, and casting it again into the bag, which he tied
once more with the cord.

Halima did not move, but she looked upon the scorpion that was black,
and her red lips trembled. Then she closed her hand upon the hedgehog's
foot that hung from her golden girdle, and shut her eyes beneath her
ebon eyebrows.

"Set my brothers upon her!" said Ben-Abid.

The plunger of the wells sprang upon Halima, opened her scarlet
bodice roughly, plunged his claw into her swelling bosom, and withdrew
it--empty.

"Kiss her close, my brothers!" whispered Ben-Abid.

A long murmur, like the growl of the tide upon a shingly beach, arose
once more from the crowd. Halima turned about, and went slowly in at her
lighted doorway, followed by Irena and Boria. The heavy door of palm was
shut behind them. The light was hidden. There was a great silence. It
was broken by Sadok's voice screaming in his beard to Ben-Abid, "My
money! Give me my money!"

He snatched it with a howl, and went capering forth into the darkness.

*****

When the next night fell upon the desert there was a great crowd
assembled in the cafe of the dancers. The pipers blew into their pipes,
and swayed upon their haunches, turning their glittering eyes to and
fro to see what man had a mind to press a piece of money upon their well
greased foreheads. The dancers came and went, promenading arm in arm
upon the earthen floor, or leaping with hands outstretched and fingers
fluttering. The Kabyle attendant slipped here and there with the coffee
cups, and the wreaths of smoke curled lightly upward towards the wooden
roof.

But Halima came not through the open doorway holding the scarlet
handkerchiefs above her head.

And presently, late in the night, they laid her body in a palanq