hat appear and
vanish in sinister doorways with the rapidity and gestures of demons. On
a market-day the city is so full that it seems as if the circling and
irregular white walls must burst and disgorge the clamouring and
gesticulating inhabitants into the tranquil plain below. Claire surveyed
this blanched hell with a still serenity, as she had often surveyed an
applauding audience at the close of her evening's task, ere she thanked
them with the curious gesture, that was almost a salaam, in which
humility and a remote pride mingled. Noise generally gave her calm; and
when passion broke from her she taught the world to be intensely silent.
These alleys became like a dream to her, and the tiny interiors of the
bazaars were little histories of visionary lives, some, but only a few,
mysteriously beautiful. One, in a very dark place where, for some
unknown cause, all voices died away till the hot air was full of a
whispering stillness, brought slow tears to Claire's eyes. In the Street
of the Slippers she passed a cupboard of wood raised high from the
pavement, with low roof, leaning walls, and, in front, a little bar like
that which fences an English baby in its chair before the fire. In this
cupboard squatted two tiny Moorish infants, sole occupants of the
cupboard, with solemn faces, bending to ply their trade of pricking
patterns upon rose-coloured Morocco leather. There was no beauty in the
cupboard, sweetness of light, or ease. And the faces of the little boys
were sad and elderly. But, placed carefully between them, was an ugly
three-legged stool, on which stood two dwarf earthen jars containing two
sprigs of orange flower, and, as Claire looked, one of the babes laid
down his leather, lifted his jar, sniffed, with a sort of gentle
resignation, at his flower, and then resumed his diligent labours,
refreshed perhaps, and strengthened. In the action Claire seemed to
catch sight of a little pallid soul striving to exist feebly among the
slippers.

"Did you see?" she cried to Renfrew, when the baby shoemakers were lost
to sight.

He nodded.

"I wish I were a Moorish woman, Desmond."

"Good Heaven! Why!"

"So that I could kiss the infant who smelt the orange flower in his own
language. Little artist!"

Her sudden blaze of enthusiasm was checked by the infernal Soko into
which they now entered. In this unpaved square, upon which the pitiless
sun beat, the earth seemed to have come alive, to have formed itself
in