no one touch it, and presently, taking from her bosom her immense door
key, she retired to enshrine the foot in her box, studded with huge
brass nails, such as stands by each dancer's bed.

And the scandal was very great in the city that such a precious thing
should be between the hands of an Ouled Nail, a girl of no repute, come
thither in a palanquin on camel-back to earn her dowry, and who would
depart into the sands of the south, laden with the gold wrung from the
pockets of loose livers.

Only Ben-Abid smiled gently when he heard of the matter.

Ben-Abid belonged to the _Tribu des blancs_, and was the singer attached
to the cafe of the smokers of the hashish. He it was who struck each
evening a guitar made of goatskin backed by sand tortoise, and lifted up
his voice in the song "Lalia":

"Ladham Pacha who has left the heart of his enemies
trembling--
O Lalia! O Lalia!
The love of women is no more sweet to me after thy love.

Thy hand is white, and thy bracelets are of the purest
silver--
And I, Ladham Pacha, love thee, without thought of
what will come.
O Lalia! O Lalia!"

The assembled smokers breathed out under the black ceiling their deep
refrain of "Wur-ra-Wurra!" and Larbi, in his Zouave jacket and his
tight, pleated skirt, threw back his small head, exposing his long brown
throat, and danced like a tired phantom in a dream.

Ben-Abid smiled, showing two rows of lustrous teeth.

"Should Halima fall ill, the foot will not avail to cure her," he
murmured. "Ben Ali Tidjani's blessing could never rest on an Ouled
Nail, who, like a little viper of the sand, has stolen into the Agha's
bosom, and filled his veins with subtle poison. She deems she has a
treasure; but let her beware: that which would protect a woman who
wears the veil will do naught for a creature who shows her face to the
stranger, and dances by night for the Zouaves and for the Spahis who
patrol the dunes."

And he struck his long fingers upon the goatskin of his instrument,
while Kouidah, the boy who played upon the little glasses and shook the
tambourine of reeds, slipped forth to tell in the city what Ben-Abid had
spoken.

Halima was enraged when she heard of it, more especially as there were
found many to believe Ben-Abid's words. She stood before her room upon
the terrace, where Zouaves were playing cards with the dancers in
the sun, and she cursed him in a shrill voice, calling hi