f the great occasion, in order (being past her youth) to
recover from the fatigue of the journey. None of the young girls had
ever seen her, and exclaiming with joy they fingered her scented pastes
and powders.

This bridal bath ceremony, being more intricate than any ordinary bath,
took a long time, and when it was over, and Ourieda a perfumed statue of
ivory, the cooling-room was entered for the dyeing of the bride's hair.
The girl's face showed how she disliked the process; but it being an
unwritten law that the hair of an Arab bride must be coloured with
_sabgha_, she submitted. After the first shudder she sat with downcast
eyes, looking indifferent, for nothing mattered to her now. Since Manoeel
would never see it again, and perhaps it would soon lie deep under earth
in a coffin, she cared very little after all that the long hair he had
thought beautiful must lose its lovely sheen for fashion's sake.

Now and then, as she worked, Zakia stooped over her victim, bringing her
old, peering face close to the bowed face of the girl to make sure the
dye did not touch it. Sanda, who had been grudgingly granted a thin
muslin robe for the bath because of her strange Roumia ideas of baring
the face and covering the body, noticed these bendings of _la hennena_,
but thought nothing of them until she happened to catch a new expression
in Ourieda's eyes. Suddenly the gloom of hopelessness had gone out of
them: and it could not be that this was the effect of the compliments
rained upon her in chorus by the guests, for until that instant the most
fantastic praise of hair, features, and figure had not extorted a smile.
What could the woman have said to give back in an instant the girl's
lost bloom and sparkle? Sanda wondered. It was like a miracle. But it
lasted only for a moment. Then it seemed that by an effort Ourieda
masked herself once more with tragedy. She turned one of her slow, sad
glances toward her aunt; and Sanda was sure she looked relieved on
seeing Lella Mabrouka absorbed in talk with the plump wife of a caid.

According to custom in great houses of the south, _la hennena_ was
escorted, after the women's fete at the _hammam_, to the home of the
bride, where she was to spend the remainder of the festive week in
heightening the girl's beauty. She was given the guest-room of the
harem, second in importance to that occupied by Colonel DeLisle's
daughter. This, as it happened, was nearer to Ourieda's room than
Sanda's or